Missing Pages

Posted: Sun 15 February, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Redesign | Leave a comment »

As part of D4D moving hosts, I haven’t yet copied over the non-blog pages. In truth, I don’t kow that I will do.  A lot of the D4D site consists/ed of pages that were no longer maintained or used any more, and were just taking up space.

I don’t know whether any of the pages were massively in use (Yes, I should’ve done a proper check before just removing them, but well, I didn’t) but I’ll keep an eye on the site error logs and see whether it’s worth copying any of it over.

Time will tell, I know – but for now there’s just going to be the main blog part here, and then from there we’ll see how it goes.

Blogroll

Posted: Sun 15 February, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Redesign | 4 Comments »

As part of the redesign here, I’ve also had a quick run-through of the blog-roll over there on the right, and culled a few I no longer read, or who no longer update.

It’s interesting seeing how things change – and adding new bits and bobs to the sidebars that now exist – and keeping everything a bit more up to date.

I’m sure I’ll add in a few more over time – there’s a couple of new additions in there already – but for now it’s enough to just be up to date.

Redesign/ Relaunch

Posted: Sat 14 February, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Redesign | 9 Comments »

As any observant person will have spotted, the design here at D4D™ has finally been updated.

At the same time, as per posts earlier this week, I’ve also upgraded to WordPress 2.7.1, migrated the database up to the proper level(which was a pig to do right) and moved hosts.

I’m now using a US-based hosting company, so the pages may take slightly longer to load (time will tell on that score) but it means I no longer have to worry about bandwidth, storage etc.

The changes appear to have been pretty smooth so far – the random titles are in place, the big black paragraph at the top of the page will change for certain days, (today being the first) and I feel that the colour-scheme is now decent enough that I don’t need to worry about the colour-scheme widget I wrote way back in the day.

I’ve still got to amend some other bits (the word count function, for example) and fix/resurrect a lot of the links on the blogroll, but yeah, the basics are there and I’m really quite pleased with the results.

To Upgrade, or Not

Posted: Wed 11 February, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Geeky, Redesign, Thoughts | 4 Comments »

One of the current questions I keep coming back to with D4D™ is whether I should bother upgrading my WordPress install to get me back up to date.

As it is, D4D™ still runs on WP 2.1 , and the current version is 2.7 . It’s so behind the times that I know I should go through the pain of a multi-version upgrade, but I honestly don’t know if I can actually be bothered.

I’m very aware that when I moved over to WP, it was a pain – although I wouldn’t go back now, believe me – and I know that the D4D™ template has been corrupted by me to within an inch of its life.

Of course, I could do the upgrade, and put D4D™ into a WP template for a while. That’d be quite a shock to the system, wouldn’t it? If I were to go that route, I’d also be putting into place at least the basics of a re-plan of how things go on D4D™ including taking out a lot of the old sections that really aren’t looked at any more, and just a bit of a tidy up.

Oh, and a move to a new/different host. After all, why make things simple and do just one thing at a time? That’s no bloody fun at all…

Redirecting

Posted: Mon 19 January, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Redesign, Thoughts, Web Development | Leave a comment »

Over the weekend, following on from a comment on here from Chris, I finally got round to making a change to the index page of D4D™ that I really should have made months (if not years) ago. And in honesty, I really thought I had done it years ago. I certainly planned to.

Anyway, the index page now redirects back to here. Which is how it should be, and what it should’ve been doing ages ago.

There are still plans for a redesign of D4D™, which would also involve moving servers to a new home. (That’s also related to another plan for some rationalisation of the number of hosting services I currently use) At that point, this section of D4D™ may change to being the index page of the entire site – so you’d only need www.dummies-for-destruction.co.uk , instead of remembering that extra /random – but setting things up in this way now will theoretically make things easier on that score anyway.

Come that time, I’ll be redirecting back the other way, so that anything at /random goes back to the index page. And all will be well.

We’ll see though. It’s a way off yet because like the builder who never completes his own extension, I’ve got enough work on right now that redeveloping/redesigning D4D™ keeps on getting put back.

Maybe I should set a target date, and then just work on thrashing it through. Or maybe I’ll simply let D4D™ keep on shambling along in its current guise for a while yet.

Time will tell.

Writing Splits

Posted: Thu 8 January, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, The '09 Writing Project, Thoughts, Writing | Leave a comment »

At the moment, I’m splitting my writing stuff between three sites and two additional projects – which is a bit of a strain, as you can imagine. Thankfully, all of them have very different styles/themes/subjects, which helps, but it can still all be a bit of a clash.
The three main sites are :

  1. Here (obviously)
  2. The company business site, which is more about business and development stuff
  3. The photography site, which is more around photography and a semi-photoblog

I don’t mind too much – well, I set myself the tasks, so I shouldn’t do – but on occasion it gets to be a bit of a head-fuck. D4D™ is obviously the one with the most updates, and the other two probably only get updated weekly. OK, sometimes fortnightly, or even monthly. But in the context of what they are, that’s (in my opinion) fairly reasonable. Neither site is high-traffic – hell, not even close – but they fulfil a need and serve a purpose.

But as time goes on this year, I don’t know that they’ll all survive. When you take into account the plan to have at least one significant dollop of “proper” writing (or two or three smaller bits than can equate to one significant dollop) done by the end of the year, well, we’ll just have to see what lives or dies on the writing front, won’t we?

So now you’re back

Posted: Mon 29 December, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Festering Season | 1 Comment »

Bah, HumbugYes, it’s Monday, and the world returns to normal post-Festering-Season. There’s only New Year this week, and then roll on Jan 6th, when all the tat comes down too.

The world hasn’t ended, and all those tosspots who went out and bought eight extra loaves (etc. etc.) in order to survive the calamity of one whole day where the supermarkets were shut are now wallowing in slowly-greening bread. (And you just know that the majority of it will be chucked away, rather than going out as bird food or whatever)

Here, all’s still trolling along at its usual pace. Nowt special, back to work for both of us, and all’s well.

I’ll write a bit more about the Festering Season at some point today. ’til then, have fun…

Returning To Normal

Posted: Mon 15 December, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Own Business, Work-related | Leave a comment »

I don’t know exactly when the last time was that I didn’t write anything on D4D™ for a day – let alone two, as happened this weekend. But we should now be getting back to normal.

Basically, last week bordered on nightmarish, particularly with regard to work. We’d released the first application/module that I’d written, and while my side generally worked fine (a couple of bugs and issues, but nothing earth-shattering, or non-fixable) the customer side was a total hellhole, involving umpteen changes to the live data as they realised that their records were horrifically incorrect.

Let’s just say that during the course of the week, I amended at least 50% of their records, as more and more errors were found. It was that kind of week. My phone just didn’t stop ringing.

Now though, that module is over and done with, and it’s just about dealing with any further fallout.

But what with “normal” work being like that, and having a deadline on some private stuff that needed completing and releasing, I just didn’t have either the time or the inclination to write here as well. For once in my life, once I’d completed the work side of things, I just didn’t want to even look at a bloody computer.

Anyway, all’s done now, and normality is slowly resuming. (Thank Christ)

I’ve still got some bugs to fix, and more ongoing work, but the two big bits are out of the way for the moment. Happy, happy day.

Quote of the Week

Posted: Wed 19 November, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts | 3 Comments »

Today’s “Quote of the Week” – which may become a title tag on D4D™…

I suffer from CDO. It’s like OCD, but the letters are all in the correct order, as they should be.

Mad Week

Posted: Mon 10 November, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Cynicism, D4D™, Domestic, Work-related | Leave a comment »

For at least the first part of this week, updates may be a bit thin on the ground.

Monday and Tuesday I’m in a work-sponsored course on basic project management. Should be a laugh – although amusingly it’s being run by a local company whose website I developed last year, and who I’ve done some more stuff for this year.

Anyway, that’s all day Monday and Tuesday. Tuesday night is the photography course – and don’t even ask about how badly I’ve screwed up this week’s assignment for night photography. (Suffice it to say that for once I’m not even going to be taking in any prints)

Wednesday work rolls back to semi-normal, except for a half-day meeting to show what’s been developed for one section already. And that’s still got a couple of bits that *ahem* need to be completed. Most of it’s working, it’s just the last-minute additions that are going to knacker me on that one. And then in the evening I’m at a social thing for local business people.

So all told, it’s going to be at least Thursday before normality resumes.

Things for the coming 12 months

Posted: Thu 6 November, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Own Business, Redesign, Resolutions, Thoughts, Work-related, Writing | 3 Comments »

So following on from yesterday’s list of plans vs. achievements and so on, this is likely the list for 2008/9. It’s not quite as intense as last year’s one, for a number of reasons. Also, I’m sure that by the end of the 12 months, there’ll be other stuff that needs to be added to it, so it’s more flexible as well.

But here goes. (And in no particular order)

  1. Sort out the mortgage renewal along with Herself (March/April)
  2. Write and Launch the two main site ideas that are in my head at the moment, and see if they can make any money
  3. Promote one of the other sites I’ve done, which has a big dollop of potential
  4. Complete the NCFE Photography qualification/course
  5. Redesign my photography site
  6. Promote the photography and site more
  7. Write at least one more big piece to get it out of my head at last
  8. Possibly redesign D4D™ a bit – I know, I’ve been talking about it now for years
    Oh yeah, and…
  9. Lose some weight, as my plans for doing so in 2008 have emphatically failed – primarily due to zero motivation to do so, but also due to life over-riding gym etc.

Semi-Normality

Posted: Tue 21 October, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Work-related | Leave a comment »

Oh, and it looks like I’ll have at least some internet access while at work, so things should be OK with keeping D4D™ up to date with thoughts and the like.

I won’t be writing loads during the day, I suspect, but at least I should be able to write things as and when I want to.

Clouds, silver linings, and all that jazz.

Reducing the Links

Posted: Fri 10 October, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | Leave a comment »

If you’re observant (and not reading this on RSS) then you may have noticed that the list of links over on the right-hand side has just been slashed fairly radically.

All told, I’ve got rid of some 25 links, which all went to sites that were either dead, deleted, hadn’t been updated in at least twelve months, or that I simply don’t read any more.

If there are any links you feel I shouldn’t have removed, let me know.

Gone Pink

Posted: Wed 1 October, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Health | Leave a comment »

Blimey, it’s October already.

And of course that also means that if you didn’t have a colour-scheme set for D4D™, then you’re now seeing a very pink site for the next month. It’s part of Breast Cancer awareness month – and as such, it’s a good cause.

You can change the colour back to your preference by clicking on the relevant colour up on the title bar, and then you won’t see the pink any more.

Spammed

Posted: Wed 20 August, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | Leave a comment »

For the first time in ages, when I looked at D4D™ this morning, I’d been swamped by a new spam attack.

160 deleted messages later (and a swift addition of a new URL to the comment blacklist) and all’s well again.

All the same, that’s the main explanation for why it’s been quiet round here this morning.

Redesign : Stage One Complete

Posted: Tue 19 August, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Redesign | Leave a comment »

A week ago, I said that I’d set up a development site for the redesign and redevelopment of D4D.

Today, one week later I’ve got the first stage of that completed – the migration of the current database over to the development site, and then upgrade it from WP2.1 to WP2.6. It might not sound like much, but it’s certainly a major stage in the process, so yes, all is good.

Now it’s “just” everything else. Deciding what to keep, what to remove, and what to do with it all.

Should be fun. *cough*

Starting a Redesign

Posted: Tue 12 August, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Redesign | Leave a comment »

In honour of having just gone past it’s sixth birthday, I’m going to be looking at redesigning D4D™

And today I’ve made the first steps – a trial area to work on it.

It’s not just a redesign though, I’m also going to look at dropping some of the sections on D4D™ that don’t get many visits, or that I just plain don’t update. It might also reduce the amount of webspace I’m using, although that’s not a big factor in the entire thing.

But we’ll see how it goes. I’m not going to guarantee anything just yet- hell, I’m not even certain that the entire database will migrate correctly, as it’s still on a very old version of WordPress- but at least I’m making those first steps.

Six Years On

Posted: Sat 9 August, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Writing | 2 Comments »

Ye Gods, I’ve been writing this rubbish for six years today.

Six years – 72 months, and somewhere around three-quarters of a million words.

As time goes on, I’m thinking more about putting D4D™ on pause for a while, during which I can put some more effort/discipline into writing other things. That might happen sometime in the next twelve months – but then again, it might not. Some of it just depends on how things work out for me with regard to work, location and the like.

All the same, six years of writing D4D™ Wow. Maybe it’s also time for a bit of a revamp – something else I’ve been thinking about for a while now…

5,000

Posted: Fri 8 August, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | Leave a comment »

According to WordPress, this is my 5,000th post on D4D™. Pity it didn’t come tomorrow, on D4D™’s sixth birthday, but there we go, life’s never that neat, is it?

All the same, 5,000 posts within six years is pretty good going, in my opinion.

Now if only I could get round to channelling some of that writing energy into something other than D4D™…

Finish this Sentence

Posted: Wed 6 August, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Thoughts | 1 Comment »

(via Gordon)
Utterly pointless, but equally quite fun.

  1. My uncle once: married my aunt
  2. Never in my life: will I stop learning things.
  3. When I was five: I was already a little smart-arse, having already been reading for two years.
  4. High school was: something that I’d prefer to forget. Particularly the last two years.
  5. I will never forget: the things that made me what I am
  6. Once I met: John Thaw, while I was working in a pub, and he was filming Kavanagh QC
  7. There’s this girl I know: and she knows I know her
  8. Once, at a bar: I stuck to the floor-tiles, and could lean at a 45° angle before I unstuck
  9. By noon, I’m usually: ready to go home
  10. Last night: slept really badly. As usual
  11. If only I had: more motivation
  12. Next time I go to church: it’ll be my funeral, with any luck. At that point I won’t care.
  13. What worries me most: is that I’ll be wrong about everything, and only find out too late
  14. When I turn my head left I see: a woodburner, and the TV
  15. When I turn my head right I see: Herself, on the sofa, with her foot up, due to those dislocated toes
  16. You know I’m lying when: my eyes cross, and I fart the Blue Danube
  17. What I miss most about the Eighties is: very, very little
  18. If I were a character in Shakespeare I’d be: the storm in the Tempest
  19. By this time next year: I’d hope to have completed some more of my business ideas
  20. A better name for me would be: That Git
  21. I have a hard time understanding: people in general, and the attraction of soap-operas on TV
  22. If I ever go back to school, I’ll: only be there to demolish the place. I’d pay good money for that job.
  23. You know I like you if: I stay in touch once I’ve moved house
  24. If I ever won an award, the first person I would thank would be: the miracle worker who made it happen
  25. Take my advice, never: piss on an electric fence
  26. My ideal breakfast is: a full breakfast at Garnish House in Cork, Ireland.
  27. A song I love but do not have is: Allison Janney as CJ Cregg miming “The Jackal” on the West Wing
  28. If you visit my hometown, I suggest you: leave, quickly, by the first available means of transport
  29. Why won’t people: learn how to handle umbrellas
  30. If you spend a night at my house: make sure you don’t step on the dog in the middle of the night.
  31. I’d stop my wedding for: Wedding? Me? Ha!
  32. The world could do without: Eastenders
  33. I’d rather lick the belly of a cockroach than: go on TV with Gillian McKeith
  34. My favourite blonde(s) is/are: Hmmm, that’s tough. Can I get back to you on that?
  35. Paper clips are more useful than: Post-Its
  36. If I do anything well it’s: screwing things up spectacularly
  37. I can’t help but: I know someone who might be able to
  38. I usually cry: when I least expect it
  39. My advice to my child/nephew/niece: Do as I say, not as I do
  40. And by the way: I still have dreams. Lots of them. I just don’t publicise them.

If you want a go, feel free. I’m not going to nominate anyone to do it – just have a go. You can even download the blank sentences here, if you want. I don’t mind.

Visitors and Tracking

Posted: Sun 3 August, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, D4D™ | Leave a comment »

It suddenly occurred to me the other day that I hadn’t actually looked at the mybloglog stats in ages. Strange really – hits and visitors used to be something that really interested me, but over the last year or so I just haven’t been looking.

So it was a bit of a surprise when I looked on MyBlogLog to see that

  1. It had been bought up by Ya-bleedin’-Hoo
  2. It no longer appeared to be tracking site visitors at all

As a result, I’ve sacked off the MyBlogLog stuff – why not, as it wasn’t doing what I wanted it to anyway – and installed Google Analytics again instead.

It means you might see me blathering a bit about site visitors etc. again before long – but don’t hold your breath.

Blockquotes

Posted: Fri 1 August, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | Leave a comment »

OK, having just looked through the front page of D4D™ today, I’m not going to quote anything else for a while, I promise.

It’s when you notice you’ve done something like that in the last four or five posts, and think “I’m sure I didn’t mean to do that” that things get a bit worrying, really.

So yes, no more blockquotes for a while. Honest.

Away from the Web

Posted: Sun 20 July, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic | Leave a comment »

A quiet weekend online here, due to the fact that we had my parents here for the weekend. As a result, yes, no updates to D4D™. Them’s the breaks.

It’s actually been a really nice weekend, actually. The village had a flower festival in its two churches, which we visited as Mother is an avid flower-arranger – and which was really enjoyable. We also visited one of the other nearby villages, which has had it’s annual “Teddy Bear festival”, the insanity of which my parents loved.

Along with a couple of very good meals out, it’s been a very pleasant weekend all told. And yes, sometimes it’s just nice to be offline for a bit as well.

Independence Day

Posted: Fri 4 July, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Cynicism, D4D™ | 2 Comments »

It’s July 4th, Independence Day for the US.

And in light of that, I bring to your attention the following document, which I just love…

Subject: NOTICE OF REVOCATION OF INDEPENDENCE
To the citizens of the United States of America,
In the light of your failure to distinguish between the scientific method and imaginary invisible friends in the sky, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy. Your new prime minister (The rt. hon. Gordon Brown, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

  1. You should look up “revocation” in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up “aluminium”. Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.
    Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up “vocabulary”. Using the same twenty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as “like” and “you know” is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. Look up “interspersed”.
  2. There is no such thing as “US English”. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf.
  3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn’t that hard.
  4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys.
  5. You should relearn your original national anthem, “God Save The Queen”, but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through.
  6. You should stop playing American “football”. There is only one kind of football. What you refer to as American “football” is not a very good game. The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays “American” football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football.
    Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American “football”, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US rugby sevens side by 2011.
  7. You should declare war on Quebec and France, using nuclear weapons if they give you any merde. The 98.85% of you who were not aware that there is a world outside your borders should count yourselves lucky. The Russians have never been the bad guys. “Merde” is French for “shit”.
  8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. December 1st will be a new national holiday, but only in England. It will be called “Indecisive Day”.
  9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.
  10. Please tell us who killed JFK. It’s been driving us crazy.

Thank you for your cooperation.

The government of the United Kingdom.

I can’t claim responsibility for this – someone else wrote it (no idea who, either) and it made me laugh. And it just seemed apt to bring it here today. Enjoy.

700,000+

Posted: Sun 22 June, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts, Work-related | 1 Comment »

It’s a bit late, but I noticed the other day that D4D ™ has just gone over the 700,000 word mark. That’s pretty scary really.

D4D™ has been going now just under five six years, so I’m averaging about 140,000 117,000 words a year, or 10,000 (roughly) per month. Not bad going at all.

However, more and more I wonder whether I’d be better pausing D4D™ for a while and to put that effort and routing into writing something a bit more formal. After all, it’s undeniable that I’ve established a fairly regular writing routine – so maybe I should try putting it to some “proper” use.

I don’t know yet, it’s still something I’m thinking about. But at the end of the day, churning out 10,000+ words a month of rubish isn’t a bad place to start…

[Edited] : Thanks BW for pointing out I’m an amnesiac twat, and it’s actually six years D4D™ has been going, not five. Figures have been recalculated as a result of my twuntdom.

Seven Songs

Posted: Tue 17 June, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Music | 4 Comments »

Damn you, Tom, just as I was doing some work, you land me with a meme that’s actually quite cool…

“List seven songs you’re into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring.”

I’m neck-deep in other stuff at the moment, and wasn’t going to add links to them, but it turned out to be pretty easy to find stuff on so most likely won’t attach links to the songs/videos (unless I can find them easily) but here goes, in no particular order, seven songs currently infecting my head…

  1. Nick Cave’s “Song of Joy” from the “Murder Ballads” album. A long-time favourite, and now a small part of the inspiration for a short screenplay I’m writing when I get time/chance/opportunity
  2. Pendulum’s “Propane Nightmares” from “In Silico” (and the most recent single) – there’s just something unidentifiably fantastic about this for me, and I’m a definite fan of the video as well, creepy preacher and all.
  3. Nine Inch Nail’s “Something I Can Never Have“, a long-time favourite that still just plays into my head at various points.
  4. Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billy Jo” – I first heard this way back on a David Holmes Essential Mix for Radio One, and it’s always been a favourite. I downloaded a Bobbie Gentry album recently, and this was on it
  5. Dead Can Dance’s “Ubiquitous Mr Lovegrove” – another favourite that is currently being part of the soundtrack for the short screenplay. It won’t be in the finished product, but it’s in my head now, so there we go.
  6. Duffy’s “Stepping Stone” – I like a lot of Duffy’s album, but for me this is the one that keeps coming back
    and finally
  7. back to Nick Cave for “The Curse of Millhaven“, again from “Murder Ballads”. I’ve been revisiting this album recently, and the chorus (small as it is) is just too catchy by far. And the lyrics, well, they’re just genius.

Who will I tag with this pain-in-the-ass? Hmm, I think it’ll be

Notes will be forthcoming…

Posted: Mon 9 June, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Getting Organised | Leave a comment »

There will be thoughts and a bit of a review of the holiday coming up on D4D™. It’s just it might not be today because:

  1. I haven’t written it all out yet
  2. I haven’t even thought about writing it all out yet
  3. I’m neck-deep in fixing some problems for the place-of-work today, and then testing the fixes before sending them live
    and
  4. I haven’t really processed all/any of the photos yet from RAW to JPG properly. They’re waiting on the laptop, which is (you guessed it) at home

So there you have it. I will be doing an update about the break – which was fantastic, as I may have mentioned last night – but it’ll probably not be here ’til tomorrow.

Coming Home

Posted: Sun 8 June, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Animals, D4D™, Domestic, Own Business, Travel | 1 Comment »

So after a week away we’ve come back to:

  • 1,000+ emails (for me)
  • 100+ emails (for Herself)
  • Shitloads of post
  • Still no fucking mains water thanks to Anglian Water being utter, utter cunts
  • Happy chickens
  • Unhappy cat (he’s displeased that we’ve brought the dog back with us)
  • A total jungle on the veg patch, except for the bits we’d cleared before
    1. The heavens opened for two solid weeks before we went away
    2. We went on holiday
  • A complete jungle of a front lawn, where I’d forgotten to mow the fucker before we went away

Was the holiday worth it? Yes.
Does it make it any easier to deal with the deluge of crap from while we were away? Kind of.
Is it good to be home? Mostly, yes.

And now back to normality. Work tomorrow, back in Yarmouth for the day. Lucky me.

WordPress is 5!

Posted: Tue 27 May, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky | Leave a comment »

Just a very quick “Happy Birthday” post for WordPress, which turns 5 today.

Amazing to believe it’s already been going that long.

And I suppose that one day I’ll upgrade D4D™ past version 2.1 – the main reason I haven’t is because I know it’ll be a pain in the arse, because of the adaptations I’ve made to the template etc. along the way. So the upgrade will probably come along at about the same time as the redesign.

In other words, sometime.

Gah

Posted: Fri 23 May, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky, Work-related | 1 Comment »

Why is it always the simple stuff that never bastard well works?

All I want to do is have a drop-down box that submits itself to a form when it changes. I’ve been trying to use all variants of

document.forms.submit()

(And document.form.submit() and document.form[‘form_name’].submit() , and document.forms[‘form_name’].submit and so on and so on)

And does it work? Does it shit. Ah well, I’ll figure it out next week.

Probably.

Spammer

Posted: Fri 23 May, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Charm School, D4D™, Weirdness | Leave a comment »

I don’t normally bother to write much about spam – partly because I get a fair amount of it (although D4D™ doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere near as much as it used to – anyone else noticed their blogs not getting so many spam comments?) and mainly because well, it’s just rubbish.

But one arrived this morning which just made me chuckle. No good reason except for a very childish sense of humour.

From: Morgan Wang.
Subject : Natural Impotence Supplement

Yes, impotence supplements coming from a Wang. I’m saying no more.

Taking my Name in Vain

Posted: Thu 22 May, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Cynicism, D4D™, Weirdness | 3 Comments »

I promise, no matter how much it sounds like me, this piece on ‘The Daily WTF’ is not me.

Honest.

I never did care about team-building, or winning a game of Laser-Tag…

Counting Down

Posted: Wed 12 March, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Own Business, Travel, Work-related | Leave a comment »

It’s not long now ’til we go off to the Lake District. In fact, we go off on Friday morning for a week – which will bring us neatly to Easter, so I’m actually not working from this Friday the 14th to Tuesday the 25th. Not a bad break, all told.

It does mean that this week is bloody manic, with normal work plus stuff for my own clients, and trying to get a dollop of work completed for them before I go off. (Which is going pretty well, and I’m sure getting through the list – but it does make for some seriously long days) I’m enjoying the work, and I’m sure it’ll make me appreciate the holiday even more.

We haven’t got much planned for while we’re away – in fact, the weather up where we’re going looks like it’s going to be bloody wet which I don’t mind – but at least it’s not looking to be as windy as it is here at the moment. It’ll mean some proper time out (although I do intend to be putting in place some more stuff for the foundations of the new business and so on) which really is much needed.

Oh, and yes, I’ve also been writing some extra posts that’ll go up here while we’re away. I’m still sad like that.

Coproxamol ‘Community’

Posted: Tue 11 March, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts | 1 Comment »

Way back at the end of January 2005, I wrote a post about the (at that time) recently announced withdrawal of the painkiller Coproxamol. Weirdly, it since appears to have become almost a noticeboard for people with views about the withdrawal and (over the last month or so) a discussion about where to keep on getting it, the best places, and customs/excise issues with importing it from other countries.

In fact, at the time of writing it’s got 122 comments on it – making it by far the most popular post on D4D™.

It strikes me as weird, actually, that there’s all this discussion on D4D™. Maybe it’s because the other site mentioned in those comments, Coproxamol.org.uk is down, with no sign of life at all. I don’t know. (It does make me think that there could be some opportunities around that site name, though- if only the owner of it were prepared to do something with it.)

Removing Links

Posted: Sat 1 March, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky | Leave a comment »

During this week, I’ve done some rationalisation/reduction of my blogroll (the links over there -> on the right) to get rid of ones that either I no longer read or they no longer write.

As such, the list of links has been reduced, but it needed to be done. Some of the ones I’ve now deleted hadn’t been updated in at least a year, so I figured it was time they went.

Still, at least the ones that remain are the ones I use on a regular basis…

Front Page

Posted: Tue 18 December, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Getting Organised | 1 Comment »

A while back, Chris commented that the front page of D4D™ hadn’t been updated in nearly three years. Know what? He was right.

So I’ve done a quick update on it, but it’s going to change again over the Festering Season™, in that the home page for the site will then redirect to come straight here, rather than using a page that’s been dead for *cough* months.

Yes, I could’ve just done the redirect straight away, but well, I figured I might as well have a little notice up about it first before just doing it. Hey Ho.

All quiet on the home front

Posted: Tue 11 December, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, D4D™, Domestic, Getting Organised, House Work, Own Business, Work-related | Leave a comment »

A day at home today – working on a client website and visiting said client with a progress and “future stuff” meeting, which was very promising. Always a good way to spend the day.

In amidst that little lot, I’ve also bought some extra bits we needed for decorating the hallway (a whole separate post, which I promised a couple of days ago and still haven’t got round to doing) and ordering a new desk for when we sort out the bedroom/office stuff. (probably either between Christmas and New Year, or early in ’08) And yes, there’s another incredulous post about customer services that’s coming up, thanks to the desk ordering process. Still, that’s for later, or another day.

Oh, and we’ve also completed the painting of the hallway, so that’s another job off the list. Yay, go us.

But because of all that, it means that things chez D4D™ are quiet today. Normal service will probably be resumed tomorrow.

Bad Behavio(u)r Upgrade

Posted: Thu 6 December, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky | Leave a comment »

If you’re running Bad Behavio(u)r on your website (as I am) you may find that you’ve been blocked from commenting on your own site (or anyone else’s) today.

It’s a problem with Bad Behavior – and there’s an update out to fix it. (And this is a direct link to the file.) Download it, unzip it, and put the bad-behaviour folder into your site’s wordpress folder in /wp-content/plugins .

And lo, job done and all fixed again.

From the Bad Behaviour blog:

Some people have asked for more details on what exactly happened. In brief, yesterday I moved all of my sites to a new dedicated server. In the process, I decommissioned an old blacklist I was running which I thought wasn’t being used, not realizing that Bad Behavior was still set to use it. Shortly afterward, I found myself locked out of my own blog, just as you all did. So therefore, this release.

Shhhhhhhhh

Posted: Fri 16 November, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Own Business, Work-related, Writing | Leave a comment »

Lack of posting today, due to being snowed with fun in a website that I’m working on.

It’s making good progress, but still leaves me with a tabula rasa for D4D™. Hey, it happens on occasion – live with it.

In other news, I’ve also made some progress already with some of those plans I was wittering about back on November 5th, as well as generating a bit more business just when I wasn’t expecting it.

So a good day, and one I’ll probably write more about later, while sat on the train home. Or something. Which reminds me, I need to find my headphones, and/or some new ones. Go figure.

Renewal of Mail Redirection

Posted: Mon 12 November, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, D4D™, Weirdness | Leave a comment »

Over the weekend, I got the usual letter from Royal Mail about continuing my mail redirection from Attleborough to the new house. Now, I know that the process is a simple one – albeit one that seems to cause a lot of people problems. D4D™ comes up second (at the moment) if you type the renewal address (www.royalmail.com/renewal) into your google search window, rather than into the address bar in a web browser.

And lo, once I’d typed in the address in the correct place, all went smoothly. Most of my mail is already coming to the correct place, so it’s not a big hassle anyway, but I’ve renewed for another three months just to make sure. It took about five minutes all told, which isn’t bad at all – and is certainly better than taking a week to process…

More bloggage?

Posted: Wed 7 November, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Own Business, Thoughts, Work-related, Writing | 1 Comment »

With the redesign and redevelopment of the business site, I’m debating adding a blog to the site. But the main debate around it is whether I want to be doing writing for three sites – what with D4D™ and the one on the photography portfolio, do I really need anything else?

The point is even more relevant when I look at the “writing” section of the plans for the next 12 months, where I also want to be doing some more ‘proper’ writing and well, I start to wonder what I can add to the business site with a blog anyway.

I can see the use of the blog on the photography site, after all – although I need to get down to adding in some more posts, and generally get to using it more (as well as sorting out the template so that it fits in with the rest of the site) but for the business site? I don’t know – can’t see it right now. It’s something to think about for the future, but at the moment well, not sure I can be chuffed with adding to the blog-writing workload after all.

Epic Spam

Posted: Tue 30 October, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Cynicism, D4D™ | 5 Comments »

I don’t normally allow spam comments to stay on D4D™, but this one is just so mad (and wordy) that I thought I’d leave it on the site.

Absolutely irrelevant, but it’s stupendously funny all the same. In fact, it’s actually worth reading – just don’t bother clicking on the links…

Moving posts

Posted: Sun 14 October, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Photography | Leave a comment »

I’m in the process of changing some things on D4D™ Primarily, I’m going to be taking the “photography” posts out of here, and moving them over to my portfolio site. For the moment at least, I’m not going to be ‘photoblogging’, but I am going to be doing a blog (although probably not a daily-updating one) on the site.

In general, I think it’ll make sense to move the posts for that over to the portfolio site, and maintain some separation between D4D™ and my other stuff. If nothing else, it’ll add some more content to the portfolio site, which makes sense and may (over time drag more people there.

I may also move some of the shots stuff there, which is part of the greater “D4D™ redesign/rethink” idea that I’ve been chuntering about for a while. It would make sense to move things about, as there’re whole sections that I don’t update at all, and perhaps would if they were easier to do – despite the fact that that’s a pathetic reason, considering I’m a techie, and could do it all easily anyway. But all the same, moving it all into something more sensible makes sense.

So anyway, yes, some (if not all) of the photography stuff will be heading over to the portfolio site over the next week or so, and then photography-based stuff is more likely to sit there than here.

C-List

Posted: Wed 3 October, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Cynicism, D4D™, Weirdness | 2 Comments »
C-List Blogger

According to this checker D4D™ has somehow managed to become a “C-List” blog. Far better than I’d have ever expected, to be honest. After all, D4D™ is well reknowned for its content – sweary, cynical, and of little or no interest to the world in general. (Well, except for the co-proxamol post and the one about Royal Mail redirection, of course)

Of course, all this ‘A-list this’, ‘B-list that’, “Z-list the other” is still a complete load of old balls, but hell, it amused me…

Pink

Posted: Mon 1 October, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Health | Leave a comment »

Yes, you may have noticed, D4D™ is using the horrific pink colour scheme during October, rather than yellow.

The reason? Go Pink for October.

And if you *really* hate the pink? Just choose a different colourscheme up at the top there, just under “Dummies for Destruction”. Simple as that…

Echo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Posted: Fri 21 September, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | 5 Comments »

Is it me, or have things gone a bit quiet round here, comment-wise?

I suspect it’s just the August/September lull, but it may be that (gasp) I’m getting boring. I dunno – you decide…

Business Motivation

Posted: Tue 11 September, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Own Business, Work-related | Leave a comment »

It’s coming up to that time again where I want to start doing some extra work. Over the last couple of months it’s just not really been feasible, with the additional pressures of relaunching the main work site as well as two smaller sites, so extra work would’ve been just insane.

Thankfully that’s now all over and done with, so I’m back to looking for more new things to be doing. I’ve had some interesting feelers from a couple of sources, and over the next two weeks I also plan to be doing some self promotion as well, sending out letters, going to do some visits, that kind of thing.

It should be interesting – but I know I need to keep myself motivated on this one. This year hasn’t been all that great motivation-wise – although that’s a whole seperate post- and one thing that has hit me hard was the evidence of my own piss-poor judgement of other people as I’ve one client who still hasn’t paid me, three months down the line. I’ve tried reminders, and generally stayed in touch, but there’s been nothing forthcoming out of him. Thankfully (well, semi-thankfully) the invoice for that one went through Parasol, so in theory it’s Parasol that should be chasing him for payment, rather than me. That doesn’t seem to actually be the case – although I wouldn’t know for sure, as Parasol are utterly shit at communication too – so it may end up going through Small Claims Court before long.

Anyway, yes, the main challenge is going to be about keeping myself motivated to get new work. Right now I just want to catch up on some sleep, but I know I need to set some time aside, sort out potential sites, and probably also redesign my company site as well as updating my profile with the various sites I’m registered on.

Should be interesting, if nothing else. And a provider of some D4D™ content along the way too, I should think. You lucky people…

Bizarre

Posted: Mon 3 September, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Weirdness | 1 Comment »

I’ve got a post on this site where I was writing about my old hosting company, Easyspace, and their slack-arse technical support team. Fair enough. It was written back in November 2002 – so about four and a half years ago, now.

And today, I’ve had two comments on that one post. Maybe it’s being linked to from somewhere. It just seems bizarre to be getting comments on a post that old that don’t appear to be from spammers…

Away

Posted: Fri 31 August, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic | Leave a comment »

This weekend we’re away, seeing friends in Reading.

It’s a much needed break after the faffing of the last few weeks, which is also why we’re making a long weekend of it. We’re going to be staying at the new Malmaison hotel in Reading, which should be fun.

Anyway, it’s quite probable that there’ll be no updates this weekend. If so, I’ll be back on either Sunday night or Monday morning.

Redesign? (Again)

Posted: Tue 28 August, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | 3 Comments »

I know I’ve blethered about it a bit before, but I’m beginning to think that D4D™ is about due (Ok, it’s way overdue) for a redesign, and a rethink.

It’s just that I really don’t have any bloody idea what I’m going to do with it.

I think I’m going to move it around a bit, so that the blog part – the bits that’re actually the main content of D4D™ – is at the root of the site, rather than where it is currently, under the /random folder. It’ll be a lot of work along the way, and making sure that everything moves over cleanly.

And then there’s the design itself.

It’s not going to be an overnight change, I’m sure. I need to think about it properly.

Writing Ambition

Posted: Sat 18 August, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Introspective, Thoughts, Writing | 1 Comment »

Having seen D4D™ hit its fifth birthday recently has made me start doing a fair amount of thinking. Well, it’s more the combination of D4D™ being five, and watching “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip“. Which just makes things even weirder.

One of the things that I wanted to do with D4D™ when I started it was to build up my writing. I used to do a lot of writing of other stuff, and along the way I churned out two novel-length (OK, if I’m honest, one novel-length, one novella-length) pieces of work. At the time they were more about therapy than anything else, but they were OK – and Herself had copies of both of them from when I initially did them. I re-read them recently and while they’re not good exactly – there’s stuff that’s too self-referential and/or indulgent, and a lot of it is “of it’s time”, shall we say – nor are they bad, either.

Anyway, along the way, D4D™ has become a bit of an entity of its own. I’ve written (at the time of doing this piece) some 4,500 posts over five years, amounting to just under 630,000 words- not including the rants and thoughts. A fair amount of it is crap, obviously – but with a fair amount of OK and good stuff thrown into the mix too. (He said, modestly) But at the same time, D4D™ is a greedy beast, and I spend more time writing odds and sods for here , which means that rather than fuelling the drive, impetus and maybe even need to write, instead it’s become the outlet, and that requirement to write is the fuel for D4D™ instead.

And where does Studio 60 come into it? Simple, really. Aaron Sorkin is one of my writing gods – I absolutely adore West Wing, and I think Studio 60 is another part of that pantheon, although I can also understand why it got canned after one season.

Over the weekend, Gordon pondered what would we do if we won the lottery. The thing I would do in that circumstance would be to take a year completely out of work (well, out of paid work, anyway) and instead use that time to put fingers to keyboard, and work to bring about some of the writing ideas that’ve taken up residence in my head over the years.

And that’s the dream, really. A life/job where the creative side takes precedence, so that I can both write and take photos for a living. The odds are fairly long that I’ll ever get there, although I still want to try.

But if I’m going to do that, perhaps D4D™ needs to go on pause, so that I have to find another outlet for the writing. It’s not going to happen just yet, but it’s something to think about. And it’s something I am thinking about. I don’t know whether it would work, but it’s something that I might just have to try…

Historical

Posted: Wed 15 August, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Weirdness | Leave a comment »

Yesterday, I did a search – yes, OK, I was bored – for Lyle D4D in Google, just to see what came up. And wow, there’s a lot of stuff in there. Not all of it connects to yours truly, of course, but at the same time there’s also one hell of a lot that does – including some bits I’d forgotten.

For instance, there was all the kerfuffle when Wileys made me change the site name from “Destruction for Dummies” for legal reasons (Sadly, the initial takedown notice disappeared when I moved away from Haloscan comments – another long time ago, now)

But among the bits I’d forgotten was the “How to Swear” post that I guest-wrote over on Uborka back in June 2004. And I have to say, I’ve thorough enjoyed re-reading that one!

Five – Post Two

Posted: Thu 9 August, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | Leave a comment »

I have to admit, I hadn’t actually clicked that today was D4D™’s fifth birthday – my head’s been completely filled with other stuff this week. (hence the rather distinct paucity of posts, f’rexample) So I can’t deny that it came as a bit of a surprise this morning to see that the header image (up at the top of the page) had changed, which is something I wrote ages ago, to change that image on certain days without me having to do anything first.

Of course, if I had noticed, then the first seven hours of the day wouldn’t have been spent re-advertising that D4D™ was four. Ahem. Still, that’s fixed now.

I should remember it’s coming up when my brother’s birthday occurs – that’s on the 6th, so I should then know about D4D™’s one. Only I also forgot about my brother’s one until the day itself. Oops. Ah well, it’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last.

Five – Post One

Posted: Thu 9 August, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | 2 Comments »

Bloody hell, I’ve been writing this rubbish for five years today.

Sheesh.

Time flies when you’re having fun…

Redesign?

Posted: Sun 22 July, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Own Business, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

It’s that time of year (again) when a techies thoughts turn to redesign. Well OK, it’s that time of year where I think about redesigns, anyway.

Primarily I’m thinking about redesigning (and in fact pretty much completely re-doing) the site I have for my private business. It’s been the same way for a year or two now, and as I need to update the information on it anyway, I’m seriously debating redoing the design and back-end as well. (When I say ‘redoing’ the back-end, I mean ‘creating’ the back-end, as currently it doesn’t have anything funky in the background, just normal flattish PHP pages)

At the same time, though, I’m already contemplating some tuning-up and/or tweaking on the photography site, as the two are closely related. There’s also been the small matter of some new business cards that bear absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to the site.

The only thing that’s stopping me, really, is that once I start, it’ll be a fairly big job. Alongside that, I’m still fairly uninspired about how a redesigned site would look. I just want to do it, I don’t yet know the details. Perhaps that’s the biggest hint that I should wait.

Currently, I’ve pretty much got the time to do a redesign project on the sites. There’s a lot of other stuff sitting on the back burner, waiting for things to happen, (designs, concepts, background information, that kind of thing) and I just know that if I got into a redesign project, then all the other more important stuff would suddenly all come back on me at once. Life’s like that.

So it’s all a bit up in the air at the moment. I haven’t yet decided what I’ll do. Time will tell.

Oh, and no, I’m still not planning a full upgrade for d4d™ I know I should do. But well, I’m not.

Swearage

Posted: Sat 21 July, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Charm School, D4D™, Sweary | Leave a comment »

Every so often, I realise that my swearing is becoming too commonplace, and it’s losing any useful impact or utility. It’s not a process I’m conscious of in general, but I do always suddenly get to a point where I think “that’s too much, it’s getting boring now.”

So I’m now going to cut it right back down again – I was going to cut it out completely, but there’s a big project at work that’s due for a deadline of the end of August, so there’s no chance of it being a complete cut-out.

But the plan is that I’ll be cutting it right back down from now, but definitely for the entire of August. It also means that I get to play (yet again) with new swear-words to replace the old standards, and that is almost as much fun in its own right.

Normality Returns

Posted: Fri 20 July, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | Leave a comment »

Oh yeah, I forgot to say. Normal Service is now resumed…

Post Of The Week

Posted: Thu 19 July, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Getting Organised, Writing | Leave a comment »
Post of the Week

It’s been a while since I’ve written about this, but Post Of The Week has been fading a bit recently, and needs people to go and nominate some decent posts.

So go on, have a look at blogs, and nominate some posts!

THE MISSION.

  • To highlight great writing on personal blogs.
  • To draw attention to blogs that you might not have heard of before.
  • To point you to one absolute guaranteed humdinger of a blog post, once a week, every week.

Finally, and almost a year after the idea was first mooted, Post of the Week (Dot Com, no less) is ready for public display. I bet you never thought you’d live to see the day, did you?

Absolutely everyone everywhere is heartily recommended to do any or all of the following:

  • Nominate cracking good blog posts for inclusion, via the comments box in the “Call for nominations” section.
  • Volunteer their services as a guest judge, for one weekend only.
  • Publicise the site on their own blogs. Pimp it, kids. Pimp it HARD.

Domestic Overload

Posted: Thu 19 July, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Getting Organised, House Work, Thoughts | 1 Comment »

Over the last couple of months, D4D™ has become a bit boring, I’m afraid. It’s primarily due to the fact that most of my waking (Yes, that’s waking – dirty-minded bastards) hours are currently occupied with either work or the new house, along with the odd side-track off into photography and/or introspection.

I definitely will be returning to the world of random outspouts, but well, not just yet. Sorry about that.

For now though. I’m aware of the issue, and looking into it. Normal service will resume as soon as possible. Probably. Before that, though, there still may be a couple of ‘before and after’ shots of the house. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

Smart vs. Stupid

Posted: Sat 9 June, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, D4D™ | 6 Comments »

I know, it’s so “do these in your first year of blogging” , but well, Skytower did it, so I thought “sod it”…

How smart are you?

And then I fucked up putting the image in on his place. Not once, but twice.

*sigh*

Busy

Posted: Fri 1 June, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Work-related | Leave a comment »

So yes, I get broadband back, and can I think of anything to post? Can I chuff.

So it may be quiet here today. What with work, other work, emails, finances, (invoices and the like) and then sloping off to see Pirates Of The Caribbean 3 tonight, well, updates may be sparse.

On the other hand, they may not.

Who knows?

Maybe. Maybe Not.

Posted: Fri 25 May, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Getting Organised | Leave a comment »

One aspect of the move that may or may not work out at the moment is all the stuff around internet access, phone lines and the like.

While I’ve organised the move with BT (and written about it before) I noticed last night that the electrician who’s been working on the place has taken out the master phone socket, and not replaced it. And because the place already has/had a phone line etc., I have a nagging feeling that BT aren’t going to be sending anyone out to actually do any work in the house. This combination makes me worry about things, as you can imagine.

If we’re lucky, (we were last time) the guy who will be installing the Sky/Sky+ at the new place today will be able to connect a phone socket to the existing wires, and all will be well, so that when I get back from work, I can connect in the phones and ADSL Modem, and everything will Just Work™.

Alternatively, well, I won’t be adding to D4D™ for a couple of days. I’ll only know at about six pm tonight, by which time well, if it’s not working, it won’t be working all weekend.

Joy

Idiot

Posted: Fri 25 May, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, D4D™ | 1 Comment »

Newsflash

I’m an idiot..

Hey, like tell me something I didn’t already know…

Spamrific

Posted: Sun 13 May, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | Leave a comment »

Ah, the joys of coming home – a four-hour drive door-to-door – to 150 spam comments.

Still, all sorted now.

Away

Posted: Fri 11 May, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Travel | Leave a comment »

I’m away this weekend, seeing friends up in Manchester. Which means that right about now (ah, the joys of being able to post-date these posts!) I should be somewhere on the M6, and I’ll be back home on Sunday.

By the time I get back, I’ll have gone over the 3,000 mile ‘guarantee’ period from when I bought the car, which is pretty good going too.

In the meantime, there’ll be a couple of updates on here, but just one or two per day – yes, I’ve been very sad and organised…

600,000 – Achieved

Posted: Fri 11 May, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | 2 Comments »

Yes, D4D™ (just this bit, not the rants, thoughts, or anywhere other than here) now contains >600,000 words.

It’s taken nine months to do the last 100,000 words – actually (having been geeky and checked it – SQL’s ‘DATEDIFF’ command is great</geeky>) 274 days – which works out as being 365 words per day.

I knew that I’d been doing more longer posts (as well as still doing plenty of smaller ones), but this certainly goes to show how much more writing I’ve been doing here. Not bad at all. Nearly five years in, and still finding rubbish to write about…

Just under 600,000

Posted: Tue 8 May, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | 2 Comments »

If you look over on the left, you’ll see that the wordcount for d4d™ is coming very close to the 600,000 mark.

Surprisingly, I only hit the 500,000 mark on 10th August last year, which means I must have really been churning out the old wordage during the last nine months!

Uninspired

Posted: Fri 4 May, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Animals, D4D™, Domestic | Leave a comment »

You know, I’m trying to think of stuff to write today, and my brain is just blank.

No good reason why – I even got some semi-decent sleep last night, after the previous night’s farce with both poxy animals being utter, utter fuckers all night long.

So *shrug*, no idea why I’m blank, but I am.

Live with it.

Home Page

Posted: Fri 20 April, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised | 2 Comments »

This week, Chris asked:

“When are you going to update the home page ?? 2005 is 2 years ago now..”

And it’s a valid point. I haven’t updated quite a number of pages since I moved over to WordPress properly, and while I’ve thought about it before, I may just have to do a little bit of a revamp and/or editing of D4D™ over the next couple of months.

Mind you, I think that the ‘random’ page is really the main landing page for D4D™ now, so maybe I should just move stuff around a bit (or just do some redirections behind the scenes) so that it becomes the ‘front’ page for the site.

It’s all definitely something to think about. And, of course, to ask you lot what you think I should do…

Introspection

Posted: Thu 5 April, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | 2 Comments »

In light of the theme of a few posts that I’ve done of late (and a few more that’re coming up over the next few days) I’ve added a new category to the list – Introspective.

Hmm, I wonder what those might be about? *grin*

Five Year Plan : 10% done

Posted: Thu 5 April, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Introspective, Own Business, Photography, Thoughts, Travel | Leave a comment »

So, back on November 5th I turned 35, and started what I semi-laughingly refer to as a five-year plan. I’m only working on it year-to-year, and doing it mainly through non-new-year ‘resolutions’ – although they might as well be a to-do list, really. In my head I hold what is pretty much the full development curve of what to do and when, but really I’m working on it on that year-at-a-time basis. It makes for something vaguely resembling a sane approach to the entire thing.
The final goal? Making enough money that I can make my own choices, and do my own things, rather than being tied to a job for the next thirty years. (Twenty-five, by the end of the project). There’s some other stuff in there as well, but that’s the bottom line. One of the things about me is that I have loads of ideas that could, should, or might make money, but for various reasons over the years I’ve failed to follow them through and see how they did in reality instead of theory. Since last November 5th, I’ve been working on making them into reality, and seeing how I do. With most of them, the initial costs are pretty low (and intentionally so) so that if any of the ideas do take off, it won’t take a lot to knock them into profitability.
We’re now six months in, so I thought I’d jot out a little progress statement, just to see where things are going…

  • Photography
    1. Get a Macro Lens
    2. Get a Wide-Angle Lens
    3. Finish the Portfolio website – completed, and with extra uploads when necessary
    4. Sell/Publish some stuff – working on it
    5. Join a local club
    6. Get a decent flash – Done, a Speedlite 580EX
    7. New : Start aiming to get work and projects – Started, and ongoing
  • Writing
    1. Finish at least one piece of writing – working on it
    2. When a piece is finished submit it to the right people
    3. Just see how things go
    4. Write more on d4d™? Maybe.
  • Work / Websites
    1. Build and work on the other ideas I’ve got in my head – working on it, and getting some of them sorted
    2. Work (as always) on smaller sites, and do as many as possible – so far, three new sites launched, as well as the photography portfolio
    3. Sort out permanent job for the first part of ’07 while we’re house-buying etc. – All done, and no need to get that nasty ‘proper’ job after all
    4. Redesign d4d™? It’s about time…
    5. Merge lots of hosting accounts into one reseller account, and onto one server – done
    6. New : Start getting better at invoicing for work done – in progress, and all being done a lot more efficiently
    7. New : Develop some ideas in partnership with others, and see how they do
  • Education
    1. Sign up with Open University – initially for a refresher course, and work from there
    2. Look at an official course/qualification in Photography?
  • Other
    1. Restart the Archery once we’ve moved – booked, but not attended yet
    2. Complete the move to Norfolk – all done
    3. New : Buy a car – git it insured, all that.

So actually, the first six months has been very productive. All the foundations have been laid now, the website hosting agreements rationalised and merged where it’s necessary or beneficial to do so. In fact, just doing that and merging most of them into one reseller account has saved me £150 over the year, which is pretty impressive. In addition to that, the invoices I sent out at the end of last year amounted to a few hundred quid, which was also surprising – they were all for small amounts, so I hadn’t really thought about the way it all added up. Actually, though, D4D™ is going to be moving off that reseller server, though – it needs a space of its own, and it’s just taking up too much of the space and bandwidth available on the reseller server, so it’s going to go back to being a seperate entity. And that actually makes some sense, keeping D4D™ seperate from business sites etc.
In addition, I’ve been able to average at getting one solid site out per month, as well as a couple of smaller basic designs and/or amendments to existing stuff. There’s a whole lot of new stuff and new connections coming through at the moment, and that’s all going to start coming together over the next six month period, I think. That’s the plan, anyway. There’s some initial steps that need to be taken in order to make sure that everything has the potential and stability to get through (sorry, I’m sounding enigmatic, and while that’s not really the intention, at the moment it’s certainly the necessity.)
Photographically, now that the portfolio site is completed, and being regularly updated, I can start getting in touch with publishers, agencies and the like. I’m also considering doing image-library stuff, but it’s about making sure the photos get the best use made of them. I’ve also got a few projects in mind that have a lot of potential commercially as well – although the main thing about them is that they’re things that interest me – otherwise, if I’m honest, there’d be no chance of me going through with them. And of course there’s going to be lots of pictures of Hound over the summer…
Oh, and let’s not forget, within that six months we’ve also moved to Norfolk, bought a house, gone through all the bureaucratic nightmares of that little endeavour, and come through it intact. Over the next 10%, we’ll be moving in, and sorting the new place out too.

It’s been a good start. There’s still a long way to go – 4½years, to be exact, but the initial steps have been promising. Long-term I’ve no idea whether my goals and plans are realistic or not – but this way well, there’s no way I’ll be able to say “I wish I’d tried xxx” – because I’m trying it all. As time progresses, I’ll get ruthless, and if the ideas aren’t working out, they’ll be culled. Darwinian business – the good ones survive, the bad ones fall by the wayside.

Identity

Posted: Fri 23 March, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Introspective, Own Business, Thoughts | 10 Comments »

One of the things I thought about back when I first started D4D™ was the identity I used in it. I specifically didn’t want it linked with my given name, and I didn’t want people to be able to find D4D™ just by Googling for my name. I knew I could be pretty acerbic (hey, who’d have thought?) and that if D4D™ took off, I didn’t want it to be able to rise up and bite me on the arse in the future. Yeah, sure, if someone does a bit of delving, it’s not all that difficult to find my ‘real’ name, but at the same time it’s not all that easy, either.
In that aim, I’ve been pretty successful. I used an identity that had been around for a fair while already – which is a whole other story – and went with it. And in some ways it’s almost been too successful. It’s now not uncommon, depending on who I’m with, to be called ‘Lyle’ to my face – slightly bizarre, to say the least. I’m used to it – and believe me, it’s a strange thing to get used to, but it happens.
But I am used to it. I’ll answer to both. And in fact even my ‘real’ name isn’t the one I was born with. That one is one I hate- primarily because it’s a name with multiple spellings, and n-one ever got it right. When I first applied for a passport, and had to get a copy of my birth certificate, even when the people creating the copy birth certificate with a form in front of them with it correctly spelled managed to fuck it up. And that really was the final straw. I was already being known by the name I’d adopted, and it was on my bank account, mail addresses and the like, so I was able to include a letter with the passport application that said

“Look, this is my true given name, but even the register-office people can’t spell it correctly. This is what I’m known as, and I include proof of that. If you absolutely have to do the passport in my given name, fine, I’ll live with it – but please, save me ten years of hassle where booked flight tickets don’t match with passport name, and if possible do the passport in the name I’ve adopted”

And they did. No-one was more amazed than me, admittedly, but they did it. And that’s the name I’ve used ever since.
Yes, sure, it causes some weirdness – particularly when I meet someone I went to school with, or extended family. But – again – I’m used to it now, and those occasions are both (thankfully) now quite rare. (Although I do have one of those family things tomorrow – but more about that on the day, I think)
Recently, though, the entire Lyle thing has risen up and bitten me on the arse a little bit.
You see, for obvious reasons, the company I run for web design and the like is in my real name, and so is the stuff I do for photography and the like. And because of the seperation I keep, it means I can’t link from, say, D4D™ to the photography site while saying “Hey, this is my stuff, and my site – good, innit?”, and the like.
It’s a weird situation – and I can’t complain too much, because it’s entirely self-created, even if for sane, sensible reasons. Some people do know me in both identities (for want of a better phrase) – and a couple know me in all three, which is really confusing – and I’m wholly and continually thankful to them for indulging my little identity foibles, and keeping it all seperate. It must be almost as weird for them as it is on occasion for me.
The situation will stay like this, though – as the business I run does better, and that side of my life grows and grows, it’s something that becomes more and more essential. I’m pretty certain, though, that this is it – I don’t plan to start off any other identities, the current level is enough for me.

Away

Posted: Fri 16 March, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Travel | Leave a comment »

From today, we’re away for a week.

First of all, though, we get to go and pick up the new (well, new to me/us) car, now it’s also been insured.

Once it’s been collected, come back home, pack up the car, and then leave to go down to Devon. Oh, on the way, we also have to pick up a new supply of happy pills for Hound.

Anyway, while we’re away, D4D™ will still have updates, as I’ve been writing a bundle of posts just for you, my beloved readers. They’re larger/longer than usual, so that should keep up the wordcount too.

Enjoy.

Shhhh

Posted: Mon 12 March, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic | 1 Comment »

Yes, so, yesterday went a bit quiet.

Basically, we went off to Holkham, and walked Hound for two hours on the beach. It was a beautiful day, and so we just ended up sodding about, walking Hound, knackering her out completely, doing some sociable stuff and some organisational stuff at home, and I just couldn’t be chuffed to log on.

But it was a great day.

Forward Thinking

Posted: Sun 4 March, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic | Leave a comment »

Later in the month, we’re going to be on holiday for a week, in deepest darkest Devon.

So over the next couple of weeks, as well as doing the normal D4D™ posts, I’m also writing others that can go up while we’re away.

How sad is that?

Head Down

Posted: Mon 26 February, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Work-related | 1 Comment »

There’s not likely to be many updates today – I’ve got my head full of work-related utter rubbish that’s about as relevant as bollocks on a kettle, but still “must be done”.

Joy…

VD

Posted: Wed 14 February, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Cynicism, D4D™ | Leave a comment »

Oh yeah, the header image up at the top of the page today (and for one day only)?

It’s a heavily cropped and buggered-about-with image of Al Capone’s infamous “Valentines Day Massacre”.

Very á propos

Spam Blocking

Posted: Tue 13 February, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky | Leave a comment »

Since installing WP2.1, there seemed to be some fairly major issues with the set-up I’d got to combat comment spam. This is a geeky post, and if you don’t care, don’t click on the more…
Read the rest of this entry »

It’s fun to stay at the…

Posted: Wed 7 February, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Weirdness | 1 Comment »

via Stuart ‘KitchenTable’, I just couldn’t resist this…

It’s fun to stay at the…

YMCA

Comments and anti-spam

Posted: Tue 6 February, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | Leave a comment »

If anyone commented over the weekend here, and it hasn’t appeared yet on the relevant post, then you’ll probably need to re-do it.

Because, like a numpty, I went and clicked the wrong button, and deleted all the ‘spam’ comments I might’ve needed to double-check.

Ooops, sorry.

Upgraded

Posted: Sat 3 February, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky | Leave a comment »

Blimey, that went smoothly. Most unexpected, I have to say. All took less than an hour, which is a lot easier than it was when I was working betwen the 1.0 and 1.5 versions, for example. Colour me impressed.

So, I’m now running on WP2.1, and will see how it all goes from there.

Upgrading

Posted: Fri 2 February, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Geeky, Getting Organised | 4 Comments »

So, the time has finally come.

Over this weekend, I’m going to be upgrading to WordPress 2.1 on D4D™. Yes, I’m nervous about it. Although I’m not going to go the whole hog and re-rationalise everything at the same time, as mooted a while back when I considered removing the older sections of the site ( to a deafening silence and dearth of comments!) but that may well happen over the next couple of months too.

If I’ve been really organised, I’ll have used a trial site in order to check things out and see what it all looks like, getting the templates in order, making sure I don’t end up with a fucked-up abortion of a site for two days.

If I haven’t been organised, then it’s going to look like a dog’s dinner here for a while as I go through and fix the problems as/when they occur.

Should be interesting, if nothing else.

Bizarre

Posted: Wed 31 January, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Weirdness | 6 Comments »

When I moved to Attleborough, I discovered there was another blogger in the town, Mr Lionel Rarsh. Hardly a shocker, knowing there’s another loon in the same small market town. After all, I suspect there were several in Bracknell, except no-one would dare admit it. Coming from there, I mean.

Anyway, in an email today it transpires that he lives exactly three houses away from me. And in a street/road of about 30 houses, those odds are pretty fuckin’ high, it has to be said.

Bizarre indeed.

Post of the Week

Posted: Thu 25 January, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, News | 1 Comment »
Post of the Week logo

As mike says (and, as withGordon’s post,from where the bulk of this post has been lifted) Post of the Week is ready, and open, and waiting for YOU.

THE MISSION.

  • To highlight great writing on personal blogs.
  • To draw attention to blogs that you might not have heard of before.
  • To point you to one absolute guaranteed humdinger of a blog post, once a week, every week.

Finally, and almost a year after the idea was first mooted, Post of the Week (Dot Com, no less) is ready for public display. I bet you never thought you’d live to see the day, did you?

Absolutely everyone everywhere is heartily recommended to do any or all of the following:

  • Nominate cracking good blog posts for inclusion, via the comments box in the “Call for nominations” section.
  • Volunteer their services as a guest judge, for one weekend only.
  • Publicise the site on their own blogs. Pimp it, kids. Pimp it HARD.

For those of you who don’t know, Gordon “One Man Designs” had the privilege of designing the site, and I did some helping out and bug-fixing (</modesty>) on the PHP in the back-end. Oh yeah, and in a fit of generosity I’m also doing the shortlisting this week. You have been warned…

So, what are you waiting for, get over there and get involved!

Jesus Loves You

Posted: Mon 22 January, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky, Sweary | Leave a comment »

I can’t help but be deeply happy when I see that I’m number one on Google for the phrase

Jesus loves you – everybody else thinks you’re a cunt

I know, it’s SO childish, but when I saw that someone had done a search on it and come to D4D™, I just had to find out where I came on the results…

New Taglines

Posted: Wed 17 January, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | 3 Comments »

I’m getting bored of some of the taglines for D4D™ – those little things way up there at the top of the window, where it says “D4D™ – ” and then some ‘witty’ comment. They change every time the page reloads (or that’s the theory, anyway)

I’ve decided that I’m going to change some of them. And add some new ones, for variety’s sake.

So – any suggestions?

Resolutions

Posted: Mon 1 January, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Festering Season, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised | Leave a comment »

Well, today’s the day that we’re supposed to do all that guff about resolutions etc.

Except, being an awkward old bastard, I started mine back in November.

So there’s no list of ‘what I plan’ for ’07, because it’s all back there. And so far, the progress is going pretty well, thanksk for asking…

Hmmm, redesign?

Posted: Fri 29 December, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Getting Organised, Thoughts | 4 Comments »

Over the christmas break, I’ve been thinking a lot about whether or not to upgrade and redesign D4D™ to WordPress 2 (the last upgrade was a pig, so it’s going to take some deliberation)

At the same time, I’m also thinking about whether to keep the old content – the rants, thoughts, etc. – as they’re all at least two years old now, if not three, and thus are fairly old and out-of-date.

So it could be that I don’t redesign per se but do reorganise, or I could do all of it. I just haven’t decided yet which I’ll do.

I think there’s definitely going to be some upgrading of WordPress etc. – I’ve been getting a butt-load of weird spam over the last couple of weeks, which seems to be slipping through the older plugins etc. – and probably some redirection of old pages to new locations etc.

Obviously I’ll keep everything as up-to-date as possible, and do the redirections etc. in order to keep everyone’s links working and the like. As for the rest of it, wait and see…

Music

Posted: Fri 22 December, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Festering Season, Work-related | 2 Comments »

Bah, HumbugThe last day in the office, it’s pretty quiet except for the fact that someone has decided to bring in a sound system, and put on a bloody Christmas CD.

I could cry.

Bah, fuckin’ humbug indeed.

Still, at least the header image on D4D™ automatically changed today, so that worked. *grin*

Preparation

Posted: Mon 11 December, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised | Leave a comment »

Today, work is notably dull, with very little going on at all.

So I’m spending the day being productive, but in a d4d™ way, rather than a “proper job” way.

As such, I’m stripping out all the old shit, tags, formatting etc. from the old sections of D4D™ (i.e. rants, thoughts, and quite possibly even photos, if the day doesn’t get busier), leaving myself with just some raw content to play with.

Why? Because I’m thinking that D4D™ really should get a revamp/redesign in the new year, and this scut-work crud is the bit where I fell over last time, and just couldn’t be arsed with it any more. So this time I’m spending some time beforehand, laying down the groundwork, and hopefully that means that any redesign project should be a lot less effort than it would otherwise be.

Refunded

Posted: Tue 5 December, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky, Getting Organised, Own Business, Work-related | 3 Comments »

A while back, I changed my account with 34sp to a ‘reseller‘ account, rather than the numerous individual accounts I had for the various websites I own/run/manage/whatever. It also means I pay £15 per month flat rate, instead of norking about with bits and bobs all over the place.

For me, it means that I can now administrate manage (and bollocks to you both, Jann and Gordon *grin*) all my sites (including D4D™) from one place, it costs me a lot less money, and just generally makes life slightly more organised, professional, and easy.

Anyway, as part of the “costs me less money”, once the sites had been copied over to the new server (reseller accounts are hosted in a different location to ‘normal’ accounts) I cancelled the personal hosting accounts for the individual sites. That particular part was a minor nightmare – but eventually got fixed on Thursday. And all the stuff I’d paid for, but not used (i.e. I’d paid for a year’s hosting, but only used six months, that kind of thing), was refunded to my reseller account, so I can use that credit to pay off those £15 per month amounts.

The amount I was refunded? £165. So my reseller stuff is paid for over the next 11 months – which I’d say was a pretty good deal!

Problem Solved

Posted: Tue 28 November, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky | 2 Comments »

Yesterday, Jann pointed out that there was a problem with D4D™ if you tried to get here by clicking on a link from another site. Ooops

Turns out, I’d forgotten to copy over a database user which was only being used for one particular function on the site – yep, the one that checked when people were coming in from other sites. Feck

Anyway, ’tis all fixed now, so all should be well again. I hope.

Finally

Posted: Thu 23 November, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky | Leave a comment »

Hallelujah. The domain switchover has finally happened at work as well. So now I can add and edit stuff on D4D™ in the same way I always used to.

I’ve still no idea why it took so long for work’s systems to change the server address, but at least it’s all done now.

Yay!

Quiet

Posted: Tue 21 November, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky, Getting Organised | Leave a comment »

D4D™ was quiet today – primarily because I could only get to the Old Server from work. I’ve no idea why it’s taken so long to migrate the DNS at work (unless the bugger’s cacheing big-time) but with luck normality will be restored tomorrow.

In the meantime, well, there’s been a bundle of stuff going on today, and I’ll be writing some more about it as I go on this evening – along with probably a back-up set of posts for the morning, just in case the DNS is still playing silly sods.

Bollocks

Posted: Mon 20 November, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky | Leave a comment »

Knew it was too good to be true.

Turns out, while the site’s domain details were saying “I’ve moved”, they hadn’t actually. Which I had a kind of nagging feeling might be the case.

So I’ve lost three posts – and a couple of comments – but only ’til tomorrow. Because I’m a bloody idiot, and the ‘back-up’ text file and database back-up I’d done are, um, at work.

And I’m not.

Bollocks

Paranoid

Posted: Mon 20 November, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Cynicism, D4D™, Geeky, Getting Organised | Leave a comment »

It’s strange, but I’m still really really unconvinced that the server move went that smoothly.

My paranoid little brain keeps saying “It can’t have been that easy. Something’s going to go wrong”.

As such, I’m taking regular backups of the database at the moment, just so that if something does go wrong, I’ve got a backup and don’t lose anything. (Except maybe some time) I wish I weren’t this cynical and paranoid, but well, technical stuff just isn’t that smooth and problem free.

I think I’ll probably be happier about it once I’ve arrived at the B&B tonight, and been able to spend some time furkling in the database on the new server, so I know that these posts are entered on the new database, not the old one. Then I might be more reassured…

All Done

Posted: Mon 20 November, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky | Leave a comment »

Well, blimey. It all looks to have moved across to the new server disturbingly smoothly.

However, 34sp went tits-up this morning, which made it look like I’d made a complete bollocks of it. Fortunately, I hadn’t, it just looked like it. Fuckers.

Still, D4D™ is now on its nice new server, and things are looking good.

Back to Yellow

Posted: Fri 3 November, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Health | Leave a comment »

Now October’s over and done with, the default colour for D4D™ should’ve gone back to Yellow.

As I said at the time, D4D™ went that horrible pink colour by default for October as part of Breast Cancer Awareness month.

What’s really sad and geeky though is that I actually just wrote a simple little script-bit that’ll change it automagically in October from now on. I really need to get out more…

Fuckin’ Comments

Posted: Thu 2 November, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky, Getting Organised, Resolutions | 1 Comment »

Yes, yet a-fucking-gain, the comments system is down.

I’m going to be looking at upgrading/redesigning D4D™ to WordPress 2.0 while we’re away this weekend, I think.

Bloody thing.

UPDATED : And now it’s fixed again. Poxy thing, definitely needs looking at. Grrrr.

Comment Problems – Again

Posted: Thu 19 October, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky | Leave a comment »

Yes, comments are currently down – I’ll work to resurrect them as soon as I can.

It’s due to an epic dollop of comment spam which has locked up the database table. Fuckin’ brilliant. Twice in a month that’s happened. I may even need to upgrade WordPress – something I’m emphatically not looking forward to.

UPDATED : All sorted – it was exactly what I thought, the comments table had locked up. A simple SQL repair table and ta-da, job done.

D-4D

Posted: Thu 12 October, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Weirdness | Leave a comment »

Ah, knew there was something I was going to post, but then forgot.

When we went down to Poole the other day, it caused me some amusement to know that I was in a Toyota Land Cruiser with their D-4D™ engine…

Maybe it’s just me, then.

Amnesiac

Posted: Wed 11 October, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, General | Leave a comment »

I’ve been looking at this “write a post” screen this morning several times, thought about something to write, then looked at other stuff, and bang, the idea’s gone.

It’s incredibly frustrating, but I’m sure I’ll remember what I was going to write at some point soon…

Away Day

Posted: Tue 10 October, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Travel | Leave a comment »

I’m away from the office (and indeed any form of useful connectivity) all day today, so don’t expect any more updates now.

I’m sure I’ll write more tonight when I get back to the land of the living. ‘Til then, though, D4D™ will go quiet.

Seeya tomorrow.

Pink?

Posted: Mon 2 October, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Health | Leave a comment »

If you’ve never bothered setting a default colour-scheme for D4D™, then you’ll notice that the site is – for October only – using the excessively foul Pink colour-scheme instead of the standard bloody-horrid Yellow one.

There’s a reason for this – it’s Breast Cancer awareness month and as such a number of sites are going Pink for October. Live with it.

Or just change the default colour scheme to Yellow by clicking on it up there somewhere.

Comment Problems

Posted: Wed 27 September, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky | Leave a comment »

OK, I don’t know why, but currently D4D™ is having major problems with a couple of bits. Commenting is the primary problem, and is currently down and out for the count.

It’s something to do with the server at 34sp.com, but currently there’s nothing showing about it on the status page, which is a bit of a worry.

So for now don’t try commenting. I’ll update as and when I get the chance.

[UPDATED : – Fixed the problem – for some reason the comments table had locked itself up in the database, so when I could finally log in this evening, I fixed the damn thing. Yay]

Starting Off

Posted: Mon 25 September, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Getting Organised, Travel, Work-related | 2 Comments »

By the time this post goes live, I’ll be on a train to Cambridge, starting off my new job.

In lots of ways I’m really looking forward to it. Although the Monday morning start is going to be a bastard for a while. Ah well.

In others, it’s going to be weird. Being away from home for four nights a week, for instance, isn’t something I’m overly looking forward to. (And, in fairness, neither is Herself) But it’s a means to an end. It’s the start of getting us up to Norfolk and so on.

I suspect I’ll be doing this for at least the next month, possibly even two months. Once we’ve moved I’ll still be commuting to work, but it’ll be a daily thing, rather than up on Monday and back on Friday.

Of course, there will be benefits to being away too. It means that I’ve the time – and most likely the inclination too – to get a couple more websites written and sorted out, including the one for my own photography. Yeah, the ImageKind gallery is OK, but it’s only a stepping-stone towards where I want to be with it all. So that’s likely to be Site No 1 on the list, with a couple of others clinging on tightly behind. It also means I’m going to be doing a lot more writing work in general of an evening, which should also be good, and might even let my brain cool down a bit, if it doesn’t have to remember every bloody thing all the time.

But anyway, it’s the start of a new chapter, and I’m looking forward to it. Obviously there’ll be more posts as and when I get chance (and remember any necessary relevant passwords!)

Educated

Posted: Tue 5 September, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Charm School, D4D™ | 2 Comments »

Ah, I do like getting fanmail.

Today’s special is a comment on this post from a while back, about my Shuttle box.

you cunt fuck you and hope you die

Ah, how lovely. No punctuation, no grammar, no explanation, and no relation to anything within the post. Just some useless abuse from some limpdick flangebucket who isn’t even brave enough to leave his email address or a link. Bless.

Upgrade?

Posted: Mon 28 August, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky, Getting Organised | Leave a comment »

Hmmm, having looked at a few things, it’s beginning to look like I’m going to need to upgrade my WordPress install after all. That’s something I’m really not looking forward to, knowing the problems I’ve had before.

Still, I’ll take a complete backup, and work from there. I might even do a local copy and install first, and see how that works before doing the live version. How’s that for organised?

WebStats – Part Two

Posted: Mon 21 August, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, D4D™, Getting Organised | 1 Comment »

OK, having done some checking, and also discovering that Webstats was now also shoving in a pop-up ad when people looked at d4d™, they’ve been kicked to the kerb.

Instead I’ve just installed the MyBlogLog stats tracker as a replacement, so it’ll be interesting to see how that works out instead. Yay me.

WebStats

Posted: Mon 21 August, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky | Leave a comment »

Annoyingly, it looks like the Webstats4U (formerly Nedstat) web stats package is having problems.

While I have access to the logfiles for proper reports, I do use Webstats as a quick indicator through the day of how D4D™ is doing – it also gives me a quick dump of how people are getting to D4D™, and a bundle of other stuff too. So it’s fairly annoying when it’s down and/or playing silly buggers.

I wonder if they’ll give any news or information about why it’s down? There’s nothing in their news at the moment…

505

Posted: Sun 20 August, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Weirdness | Leave a comment »

Is it really sad for me to notice this

505,505 words in word count

and be quite chuffed to have seen that number in all its palindromic and repetitive glory?

Yeah, thought so.

V

Posted: Fri 18 August, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Travel | Leave a comment »

Away for the next couple of days, as we’ll be at V2006 in Weston Park, Staffs.

There’ll be some updates to D4D™ through the joys of post-dating entries, but not many. So have fun, and I’ll be back writing stuff on Monday.

Half a Million

Posted: Thu 10 August, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts | 3 Comments »

Well – the day after D4D™’s fourth birthday, the word count goes over 500,000. So that averages out as 125,000 words per year on this site (excluding Rants, Thoughts, etc., which the word-count doesn’t include).

Apparently, the “average” hardback novel contains somewhere around 100,000-150,000 words, so in theory that means that D4D™ roughly works out as a novel a year. Blimey.

Of course, D4D™ was never intended as a scheme to get a book deal – that’s no disrespect to those people who do, because I just think good for them, but it’s not really what I was ever aiming for. But still, you can see why publishers are trying to get book deals and so on out of bloggers, if that’s the kind of word-count they’re putting out…

Another Year

Posted: Wed 9 August, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, General, Getting Organised | 2 Comments »

So yes, as you’ll see up in the title bar, D4D™ is four today.

1,461 days ago I started writing this thing. Nearly half a million words later, in just over 3,710 posts, it’s still going strong.

I don’t know if I ever really expected to see four years in this. It started off as a braindump, and a plan to see whether I actually could keep up my interest in a project – something I’m renowned for, getting bored with a project once it’s done, and moving on to something else. Of course, with something written like D4D™ you have to ask yourself whether it’s ever truly finished.

  • Four years ago I was just starting out with D4D™ and blogging in general. It was a phase, an “I wonder if…” moment, and I didn’t really have any clue what I was going to do with it, no “theme”, no nowt.
  • Three years ago I was sorting out moving house, and I’d just started working for a council, in their web department (with Stinky®)
  • Two years ago I was in Norfolk, with Herself and her family, and still working for that council, with Stinky®, but starting to think about moving to live with Herself.
  • One year ago I was working for the company I’m still with now, the Arsehole Boss was on his way to being kicked out by the Board (an auspicious, if ultimately ill-fated move) so all was well on that score, cursing the Mambo CMS, and contemplating security announcements. Oh, and just coming up to passing my driving test.
  • And now I’m still with Herself, planning on moving house to Norfolk, sorting out life, working for an Arsehole, and waiting for the paperwork and confirmation that I’m starting work with a council, in their web department. Hopefully this time without Stinky®

I wonder what I’ll be writing here in a years time?

One things pretty much for sure , though. I’ll still be here.

Crystal Web

Posted: Mon 7 August, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky, News | Leave a comment »

So, 15 years ago yesterday, the Web was really born. Happy Crystal anniversary, Internet.

I first got online properly back in about ’92-’93, which was through a JANET line from Oxford University. A whole 9.6Kbps ( 9,600baud ) – for a university computer centre. I went on a couple of bulletin boards in the US, and while it was OK, and really pretty impressive to be able to be doing computer stuff trans-Atlantically, but still, well, it wasn’t really all that great.

Then in ’96 I worked briefly for a medical company doing some of the first websites. They were promoting their stuff internationally, and created a website to do it. And the beast started from there. Before long I was doing websites, and had my own personal one. (Thankfully, time has since deleted that monstrosity from history) I moved on to work for another company that did online versions of various academic magazines, and worked with SGML and XML. And since then, for the last ten years, I’ve been working on websites. And for the last four I’ve been writing D4D™ too – which is pretty scary in itself.

CAPS LOCK

Posted: Mon 7 August, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts | 3 Comments »

I wonder, do some people just not realise how fucking annoying it is to KEEP CAPS LOCK ON when writing comments?

The comments here from last night are a perfect case in point. I’m debating going in and changing it all to proper case. But then again, that’d ruin the impact…

Heading Towards 500,000

Posted: Tue 1 August, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky | 1 Comment »

Now here’s a scary thing. If you look over on the right, you’ll see a thing about “D4D™ contains [x] words”

Currently it’s just gone over the 495,000 mark – which means that sometime soon I’m going to have written half a million words on d4d™. That’s a pretty impressive figure, or at least I think it is. And because it doesn’t take into account the rants and thoughts, I’m actually already well over that half-million figure already. It’s just I never did a word count on them, so I don’t know exactly what the figure is.

Anyway, it’s not meant to be a milestone or anything – I never set out to write half a million words, and be done with it, or anything like that. And really it’s just a geeky counter, with no real relevance attached to it. But all the same, to me it represents some kind of achievement, to have written that many words – and blethered on in general – for nearly four years (four years exactly, on August 9th) so while it’s ultimately irrelevant, I still find it worth noting.

Or something.

Google Search

Posted: Sat 29 July, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts, Work-related | 4 Comments »

So D4D™ comes in at #4 for “how to not work for an arsehole” in Google, according to the stats I looked at today.

Ah, if only I knew that, I wouldn’t still be working for Arsehole Boss, and before that Twunty Manager, and before that, Stinky.

How do you manage to not work for an arsehole? Go self-employed. And even then you might still be doing so…

Blocked

Posted: Thu 27 July, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts, Weirdness | Leave a comment »

I don’t know why, but my brain’s just not working right today.

I’ve got three posts in “Draft” version at the moment, and I can’t get the right wording for any of them. I hate being like this – thankfully it’s not a common occurrence. However, when it does happen, it drives me nuts.

I know what I want to say, I just can’t think of the best way to phrase it. I need to dump my brain somewhere, and for once D4D™ isn’t the place…

New Paradigms

Posted: Tue 18 July, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, D4D™, Own Business, Thoughts, Work-related | Leave a comment »

Recently I’ve been very impressed by a certain aspect of two businesses – I hope it’s a sign of some companies who are beginning to grasp the power of the Internet, Google, and websites – particularly blogs, review sites and so on – but primarily I guess it comes down to Google.

The first instance involved a company called Game Tart. A while back I wrote two posts about them, as I’d been disappointed by their service once the initial trial period had expired. Anyway, the MD of GameTart obviously checked the Google results for the company name where, lo and behold, d4d™ is at about number 13. And then he left a comment on one of the posts. To me, that’s pretty impressive – I know it doesn’t take a whole load of work, but all the same, it shows a level of effort that, for example, B&Q‘s management have never bothered with.

The second instance occurred last night, and instead relates to Wheres Good. Someone had added a review of Pokeno Pies in Brighton although they’d added in an incorrect price. Again, one of the main people in the company had done a google search, where, yes, Where’s Good comes in at about number 18, had checked the review, and then emailed me to a) thank me for the review, and b) to ask to edit the price. Again, that’s pretty impressive – to me, it’s great to see companies that are getting the idea on this internet stuff, and beginning to realise how much a few simple pieces of effort can reflect positively upon them.

Overtime

Posted: Mon 17 July, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Getting Organised, Own Business, Work-related | Leave a comment »

Well, Sunday was mainly taken up with finishing the first version of the site that reared up to annoy me last week. It took most of the day, but at least it’s completed now.

There’s still a lot to be done, and this version is just an alpha version, for people to look at and bang around on a bit.

But at least it’s got the people off my back for now, so my will to live is kind of back on track.

Hallelujah.

Spammage

Posted: Thu 13 July, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky | 2 Comments »

Over the last few days D4D™ has been drowning under a huge dollop of spam comments, mainly from two sites. Akismet wasn’t doing much to stop them, neither was SpamKarma2, and it amounted to something like 1,500 comments over three days.

To add to the fun, for some reason my WP admin section wasn’t allowing me to add things to the “blacklist” it’s got in its admin either, constantly telling me it’d failed some part of the page load. Which is weird, and I’ll be figuring that out more later.

Anyway, I ended up just having to get my hands dirty, and ferreting about inside the database itself in order to add the culprit domains to the blacklist. And since then, I’ve not had one spam comment from those domains, so I guess it must’ve worked.

Woo, and indeed Yay.

Found Out!

Posted: Fri 16 June, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Weirdness, Work-related | 1 Comment »

Zounds!

A work-based ranty piece has been found by someone who found the same comments in their support email.

Which means that, in theory at least, someone somewhere knows who I am and who I work for. Oh, and who Arsehole Boss is.

Lucky, really, that I’ve never even hinted obscurely at the company name, or Arsehole Boss’s name, and so they still can’t find me easily. And if they do? Well, I’ll live…

Less Posts

Posted: Mon 5 June, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic | Leave a comment »

We’re away this week, off to sunny (with luck) Norfolk.

As a result, there’s still going to be some updates here and so on, but nothing special. Enjoy, anyway.

And normal service will be resumed over the weekend, once we’re back…

Mouth Before Brain

Posted: Thu 1 June, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Charm School, Cynicism, D4D™, Work-related | 2 Comments »

It’s been another shitty day, with “urgent” projects and amendments that need to be done yesterday.

However, it means that when push comes to shove, my mouth is on autopilot when it comes to Arsehole Boss.

AB : Lyle, you shouldn’t take these things personally.
Me : Oh, I don’t. I just assume that the world is filled with incompetent bastards who can’t find their own arses with both hands and a flashlight.
AB : … [ silence ]
Me : Know what? I’m rarely wrong.

All Quiet

Posted: Sun 28 May, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Own Business, Work-related | Leave a comment »

Ah, the joys of a long weekend – and a quiet weekend at that.

For once, the intention to do as close to sod-all as possible seems to be working. Yeah, sure, we’ve done bits here and there – mowed the grass, done some garden stuff, got another water butt (this one makes three – I reckon there’ll be at least one more before we’re done), that kind of thing.

But in general, well, all’s quiet.

No bad thing, every so often. Although, of course, it does mean I end up neglecting D4D a little bit. Still, even that is hardly a common occurrence. And I’ve still been doing little bits on Where’s Good, and started off with the ideas for the next website in the series…

Wheres Good

Posted: Thu 18 May, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, General, Own Business, Thinking About..., Web Development, Work-related | Leave a comment »

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve continued working as and when I can on Where’s Good. It’s beginning to come together nicely – of course, it’s still woefully light on reviews and recommendations, but I’m looking at making the site a success on a long-term basis, rather than just an overnight flash in the pan. If I’m right, it’ll all come together.

Anyway, one of the more fun bits of work I’ve done on the site has been to put a blog on it. Yeah, very sad, and very much in keeping with the Web2.0 checklist, but I figure it’s something that might be useful in keeping track of what’s going on, what’s being worked on, etc. etc.

It also gave me a chance to work with WordPress 2.0 , which so far I’ve resisted using on D4D™, for a number of reasons. Mainly, I haven’t had time. But also I know that my WP install is hardly “normal” so it’ll take time to merge it into WP 2.0’s formats. And frankly, I can’t be arsed.

Anyway, it’s all slowly working out, and making steady progress. And I think that’s pretty groovy, all things considered.

Silent Bob

Posted: Wed 17 May, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | 2 Comments »

Thanks to Pete for introducing me to Silent Bob Speaks (AKA “My boring-ass life”), the site written by Kevin Smith, the man behind Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, etc. etc.

I’m all about longevity.

Except, y’know… in bed. As my wife will tell you, I’m a five minute-max-kinda-guy there. But they’re some of the sweatiest, fear-of-being-crushed-inducing five minutes my woman has ever known.

So I got THAT going for me.

Absolutely brilliant.

Spammage

Posted: Mon 17 April, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Charm School, D4D™ | 1 Comment »

I got an email today, that’s just pure spammage…

Hello
My name is Joe Butch and I’m with [website]. Our site is
dedicated to informing the public about accidents as well as providing
the service of locating local attorneys and law firms for anyone in the
United States.

We have recently come upon dummies-for-destruction.co.uk and we believe
that your site’s audience will take advantage of the service we
provide. That’s why we would like to inform you about our site and to
propose submitting our link to your web page located at
www.dummies-for-destruction.co.uk/2004_10_01_archive.html

In true Lyle Style™, for once I’ve replied…

Dear Sir,

Might I suggest that your organisation takes time to figure out that a .co.uk is a UK-based domain name, and thus not interested in American lawyers at all.

Then might I suggest that you take your spam, and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.

Sincerely

Lyle

1500

Posted: Tue 11 April, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | Leave a comment »

According to my webstats (I’m not quite sad enough to count this out for myself) d4d™ has now been going for 1,500 days exactly. Now that’s scary.

Yes, it’s spread over two domain names, and nothing really got going on the d4d™ that we know and love today for quite a while (about four months, I think) but all the same, 1,500 days. That’s just over four years now that I’ve had this little ole name…

Strange Requests

Posted: Sat 8 April, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Weirdness | Leave a comment »

OK, this one’s a bit worrying. Apparently, d4d™ comes in as the #1 result in google for What is the sentence for kidnapping owls. Bizarre.

What’s more bizarre is : Who the hell would want to know. And why?

Busy busy busy

Posted: Fri 7 April, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky | 2 Comments »

I’ve just done a quick’n’ropy webstats analysis, which came out with the following figures…

  • Successful requests: 8,004,234
  • Average successful requests per day: 5,353
  • Successful requests for pages: 3,474,208
  • Average successful requests for pages per day: 2,323
  • Distinct files requested: 32,961
  • Distinct hosts served: 176,044
  • Data transferred: 46.11 gigabytes (432.60 megabytes)

Yes, that means that sometime yesterday d4d™ had it’s eight millionth hit. And just under 3.5 million page impressions. Not bad at all…

Uninspired

Posted: Tue 4 April, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | Leave a comment »

Hmm, today is a rather flat day. I just can’t be chuffed with most things – work, writing, thinking, the normal kind of thing.

As such, d4d™ may be rather shorter of content than usual for the moment.

Sorry ’bout that.

… And The Living Is Easy

Posted: Mon 27 March, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts, Weirdness | Leave a comment »

Sorry about the title, I just couldn’t resist.

Anyway, yesterday the clocks went forward, so now apparently it’s summer. Or at least Spring. Or something where the clocks have gone forward an hour anyway.

And I have to say, I really do like systems where the clocks change automatically. Usually my alarm clock does it too, being one of the “radio-controlled” ones that links to some International Time Signal or other. Rugby, I think. But this time it didn’t which led to a bit of confusion. Maybe it’s time to get some more batteries for the thing. I’ve had it about seven years now, and only changed batteries three times, so yeah, maybe it’s getting to that time. Or – gasp! – perhaps I should buy a new one. Nah, see how this one does first.

Anyway, the mobile phone changed automatically, so did the landline, all the computers, Sky+, TiVo, etc. But there’s always a couple you forget, aren’t there? I didn’t remember the WordPress clock (for d4d™) and can’t be arsed to change it anyway, and then there’s things like wall-clock in the kitchen, and central-heating. In fairness, Herself has changed the ones that need changing manually – I completely forgot – but I still find it surprising just how many things we have in everyday life to tell us the time. It’s like an obsession!

Navigation Revisited

Posted: Wed 22 March, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | 3 Comments »

Following on from the post last week (if not the week before, but I can’t be arsed to check) about “mystery navigation” etc., I’ve decided that for the moment I’ll make the navigation stuff more visible.

I don’t know if it’ll make any real differences – I suspect not, after all this time – but I figure I might as well at least have a look and see how we do with a bit more “user friendliness”…

Akismet

Posted: Tue 21 March, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | 4 Comments »

In the continuing fight against comment spam, I’ve installed a new (well, new to me, anyway) plug-in on WordPress called Akismet. It’s been recommended by various people, so I thought I’d give it a thrash as there’s been an amount of stuff that SpamKarma was letting through, and it’s also been flagging up certain people (mainly Gordon and Pix (oops, and Tom – sorry!)) as spam-commenters, which of course they’re not.

So I’ll see how it goes – I’m sure a report will follow…

Oops

Posted: Tue 21 March, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | Leave a comment »

If you’re using a colour scheme other than “Worksafe” or “Inverted”, you’ll notice that something’s gone tits-up on the layout of the page.

I’m working on it, honest.

In the meantime, you may want to click here and change the colour-scheme to Worksafe for the moment… Sorry for the fuck-up – I don’t know what’s caused it.

UPDATED : Ah, fixed it. Yay me. I’d screwed up some stuff, but all is resurrected to normality again now. *Makes note to do a complete back-up*

The Book Title Meme

Posted: Tue 21 March, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, General, Thoughts | 3 Comments »

From Gordon comes a rather interesting meme-tag thingy…

1. The Dying Of Delight – “Briefly describe an aspect of your life for which ‘The Dying Of Delight’ would be an apt title.â€?

  My delight died a long time ago. At the time I didn’t know what it was I was losing, or that it would still bother me so long after it went. I didn’t know what I was doing, I was too young to understand the choices I was making, or that were being made for me.
  Looking back, I wonder whether I would change those events – so life-changing in so many ways, I know that if I were to change them, I would be a very different person today. But at the same time, because of those events and the way they changed me, I now sit in a place where I can understand myself well, and by extension can also identify with many other people, and empathise with their lives. Would I change that? I don’t know.
  The man who changed me is dead now, I can’t go back and ask him why, I can’t change things, or get questions answered now that at the time I deemed irrelevant. Now, though, I would like answers, and they are as unobtainable as a jar of moonlight.

2. Woken Furies – “Pick another book whose title has some resonance in your life, and write a little about it.â€?

I guess that the entire concept of “Woken Furies” resonates with me quite a bit, the concept of revenge, of letting ones anger and fury freeze over, to wait years even decades for the perfect time when that fury could be thawed out, woken up, and used in the most powerful and righteous way possible. In a different universe, or a parallel existence, I could have found myself becoming a truly vengeful person, wanting retribution against those who have wronged me, or even – in an extreme case – those who I think have wronged me.

3. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time – “Write one more short personal piece – one which matches the book title chosen (in part 2) by the person who tagged you.â€?
Why is it that dogs only ever choose to bark through the night at the times when you’re most exhausted, and most in need of sleep?
(How’s that for short?)

4. Wireless, by Jack O’Connell – “Take your favourite little-known book and plug it to your readers. Authors need incomes, and word of mouth is one of the best ways to sell books.â€?

I never quite figured out why I love Wireless so much. It’s a very odd story where you never actually find out who two of the main protagonists are, and where strange things happen for various reasons. Centring (loosely) around a bar called Wireless, but looking at hackers, radio jammers, DJs, talk radio, and a whole lot of other things, it grabbed me on the first read and has been one I regularly return to ever since.

Jack O’Connell’s work isn’t for everyone – most of my friends have absolutely hated the stuff he’s written, mainly (I think) because it’s a) bloody weird, and b) a lot of it is obscure and seems to go nowhere. Box Nine was memorable, Wireless I love, Skin Palace is good, and Word Made Flesh is just supremely weird. He seems to have disappeared off the face of the planet now, although I’d love to see something new come about.
5. Sit back and marvel at the magnificence of this meme.
It was brought to you by an out-of-breath author, reduced (on account of her publisher having expired) to trundling copies of her book across the internet on a rusty old trolley with one wheel missing, sweating and shouting “Buy me book, Gov?� Now visit www.TheDyingOfDelight.co.uk and see if you’d like a copy for yourself.

6 .Tag five people with this meme
Hmm, a couple of people have already been tagged with this who I’d have asked (Karen and Gordon), so I guess it’ll have to be :

Aviation

Posted: Mon 20 March, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Animals, D4D™ | Leave a comment »

Last night was the closest I’ve been to murder in quite a while. And it all comes down to bloody animals. (Again)

As it was, I was completely knackered, and for once just wanted to sleep. So, of course, Psycho Cat decided to sleep on the bed too, right against my legs. First of all, he was using his special “heavier than lead” talent to make sure I couldn’t move the little shit, let alone try to get my legs back under the covers once they got chilly during the night. And then when I tried moving him again, the fucker stuck all his claws into my calf – just a warning, to say “Oi, I’m here” , like I didn’t know already.

Anyway, when that happens, the cat gets a flying lesson. Nothing hard, but he still comes off the bed at speed. Thing is, he doesn’t learn.

Overall, the little bastard had four flying lessons last night before sodding off and sleeping in the chair. And my calf muscle looks like it’s been attacked by a cactus…

Thinking About… Navigation

Posted: Tue 14 March, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky, Thinking About..., Web Development | 1 Comment »

Over the weekend, Pete pointed out a piece about “mystery” navigation on websites that doesn’t tell people where they’re heading. He suggested it might be rather relevant to me, seeing as d4d™ does exactly that. (And I recently discovered that the rollovers for showing where you’re going when the mouse hovers over the button doesn’t actually work in IE – I’d always kind of assumed it did, and thus hadn’t tested it. Mea culpa)

Anyway, it’s something that I started off as a project on here, something where I was interested to see how people used it. Initially it actually had the look of buttons – using nasty Javascript rollovers and images – where you only knew where you were going once the mouse was already over the button. But it was ugly, so when I went over to CSS for the main bit of the site, I just kept it with text but still on the same theory, not knowing where you were going ’til the mouse was over the button.

You see, my theory is that most people actually navigate based on position, rather than necessarily reading the button that tells them where they’re going. (And yes, I realise there’s a fallacy to this for first time visitors – just bear with me, OK?) I’ve worked on sites where the navigation was truly dynamic, and altered itself so that the “most used” buttons for user ended up at the top of the navigation tree (Man, you should’ve seen the database behind that bugger) and so the nav was different for every regular user, and also changed as you used it.

However, it turned out people hated this – about 75% of the regular users would already have their mouse pointing at the place on the screen that held the button for where they wanted to go, and when that changed, it annoyed them. It’s the same kind of theory that annoys people when supermarkets change the shelf layout, or store position for certain items. People like patterns. People stick to patterns (for the most part) and thus reinforce those patterns.

So d4d™ went the other way – if you knew where you were going, it didn’t matter what the button said – and in fact it could say nothing at all. In many ways it’s an experiment that’s worked – but it’s also one I wouldn’t put onto a commercial site I was doing. When it’s commercial, you really pretty much have to make sure you’re open to everyone, with a particular focus on the first-time visitor. If they don’t like what they see, or find it hard to get round, then they won’t become a repeat visitor.

(I’ve currently also been trying to persuade work about this one, that dynamic nav might sound cool and look cool, but long-term it pisses people off and is epically counter-productive)

Back

Posted: Fri 10 March, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Travel | 3 Comments »

Yes, we’re back. And a bloody good week it was, too. Definitely feeling far better for it, and with some semblance of sanity restored.

More later, but for now it’s time to get back ontrack, read some sites, all that kind of gubbins.

Oh, and delete 2,500+ spam comments, mostly caught by the anti-spam stuff, thankfully…

Away

Posted: Sat 4 March, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic | Leave a comment »

Yes, yet again we’re off on our travels. This time we’re spending a week in the Lake District, along with Hound.

Quite why the place we’ve rented only does Friday to Friday bookings I don’t know, but that’s the way it is. So we’re off from today, and new nice fresh posts will start happening again on the 11th or so. In the meantime, I’ve written a few posts that’ll appear over the next week, so it’ll still be business as semi-usual while we’re away.

Have fun!

Prepared

Posted: Thu 2 March, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | 4 Comments »

Sheesh, talk about being prepared. I’ve now managed to write at least one post for every day next week – and they’re all fairly decent sized things.

As you may or may not know already, we’re off to the Lake District for a week from tomorrow, and just because I’m lovely and think so much of you all, I’ve been busy writing two weeks worth of posts this week – the ones that are already displayed, and the ones for next week.

How’s that for dedication? (or stupidity – you decide)

Continued Downage

Posted: Thu 2 March, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, D4D™, Geeky | Leave a comment »

Well, it looks like 34sp are still having intermittent problems with their service at the moment.

So, why aren’t I pissed off?

Well, primarily because as usual with 34sp, they let you know what’s going on. OK, you’ve got to know about status.34sp.com, which is on a different network entirely so even if every 34sp website is down, status is still letting you know what’s happening.

Secondly, it’s because it’s not actually their fault – this is a problem with the link from 34sp to the outside world, which is failing a lot. And they don’t yet know why. But they’ve said they’re looking into it, and for once I believe them.

And thirdly, because this is a rarity. In four years with 34sp, this is the first major unintended downtime I’ve seen. And that, for my money, is pretty good service in anyone’s book.

Outage

Posted: Tue 28 February, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | 1 Comment »

Sorry for unavailability of d4d™ today, but 34sp, my hosting company, has been completely down all morning.

It may, or may not, now be fixed.

Colours – Again

Posted: Wed 22 February, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Own Business, Thinking About..., Web Development, Work-related | 1 Comment »

OK, so I was about right in what I figured, regarding website colours and so on.

As with most things – some people like it, some people hate it, and the majority don’t seem to care one way or t’other. Figures.

However, the experiment between “Worksafe” and “Inverted” wasn’t just about people’s reactions to colour, it was also about which produced less eye-strain after a while using it. My personal preference is still for light text on dark backgrounds, whereas most people seem to prefer dark-on-light. I’d guess that’s down to being used to newsprint, and print in general, with black ink on white/whiteish paper.

I do find that after a solid day of looking at a white background to work on, my eyes can be quite tired. It’s the constant “glare” of a predominantly white screen day in, day out, that seems to have an effect. And on that score, light text on a dark background seems to produce less eye-strain, and less headaches.

But from the look of it, on the commercial things I’m doing, I’m going to have to go with dark-on-light as a preference on the colour schemes. I might put in a colour-switcher similar to d4d™ though, just to give people the option (and, of course, so I can have my preferred light-on-dark scheme for working on the bugger x hours a day!)

As always, any thoughts or responses will be greatfully received…

Organising d4d™

Posted: Wed 22 February, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Getting Organised | 1 Comment »

At long last, I’m considering a bit of a revamp on a couple of things in d4d™. When I upgraded from Blogger to WordPress last year (if not late ’04, thinking about it) I moved the main blog part of the site over to CSS and made it all a bit smarter.

However, the older sections got left alone – I never got round to moving the rants and thoughts into the new layout, which was outrageously slack of me at the time, and hasn’t shown any signs of improving since.

As it is, I’m thinking that perhaps I should just copy over the content of those pages of rants, thoughts and photos, and dropping it all into WordPress. Of course, I could also take that opportunity to upgrade to WP2.0 (or 2.0.1, or whatever it is now) at the same time, as the upgrade is sure to leave me swearing anyway. Might as well do it all at once, after all…

Colours

Posted: Tue 21 February, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky | 2 Comments »

In case you were wondering just what I was banging on about in the post below, I’ve just added a new CSS colour option “Inverted”, which takes the “Worksafe” colourscheme and – you’ve guessed it – pretty much inverts it.

Gordon, I’d be particularly interested in your thoughts about the two, and which works better.

But also, well, anyone who’s got a viewpoint – as always…

Thoughts

Posted: Sun 19 February, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Thinking About... | Leave a comment »

Just as a bit of slightly advanced warning, as of tomorrow I’m going to be starting to do a string of “Thinking About…” posts. They’re based around web development and the movement of my own business plans, and as such will have their own “thinking about…” category.

As time goes on the theme will probably diversify a fair bit, but for now it’s going to be primarily about web development and business.

Whether they’re interesting or not is something that remains to be seen…

Stats

Posted: Thu 16 February, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | 3 Comments »

Writing yesterday about Measure Map, I suddenly realised I hadn’t dumped a full stats analysis on here in ages – in fact, since August, and d4d™’s third birthday. Quite scary in itself, the way time flies past and so on.

So overnight last night (hey, 3.5 years of logfiles takes some analysing!) I did a full report, and it’s visible here. It makes for pretty interesting reading, but the main bullet points are :

  • 8,331,621 total hits since 3rd April 2002
  • 3,883,922 pages viewed in that time
  • 1,055,503 total visitors
  • an average of 732 visitors per day
  • 46.82 GB of data moved

Not bad for a little puny old blog, eh?

Book List

Posted: Thu 16 February, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | Leave a comment »

It’s no use – I was really good at listing the books I’d read last year, but for some reason I just can’t get into it this year at all.

So, for now at least, I’ve deleted the section. Hey Ho.

Validation pt.2

Posted: Wed 15 February, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky | Leave a comment »

A quick thanks to Pete, who pointed out that I’d got something on this page that was breaking the “XHTML1.0 Transitional” validation.

All is fixed now – just a pesky border tag on one link. No idea how it got there, either. Ah well.

Chuff

Posted: Tue 14 February, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Sweary | Leave a comment »

I’m so proud. Wandering through my referrer stats, I came across a google search for “Fuck My Chuff” (an elegant phrase – what a pity it didn’t come up as an entire line. Still, it will now…) so I thought “Ah, what the hell, let’s see where I come in google for that.

#1, Baby.

I’m so sad…

Cynicism

Posted: Tue 14 February, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Cynicism, D4D™ | Leave a comment »

In light of it being Valentine’s Day, and in recognition of all the shit that goes on around it, I’ve decided to keep a count today of all the sad sods wandering around with bouquets of hyper-expensive flowers.

It should be amusing, if nowt else.

Current Count : 3 4 5 6 7 9 10 11.

Oh, and just in case anyone was interested, the header image today is pilfered/adapted from a thing about the St. Valentines Day massacre. Cheers, Google Images…

Own Stuff

Posted: Thu 9 February, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Own Business | 3 Comments »

Of course, one good thing about working from home over the last few days has been that I also had the time (and, for once, the inclination) to sort out a sort-of-corporate(ish) website for my own private web-design stuff and so on. It used to be the site I used for my limited company, but as I folded that up last year, I needed to re-do some of the stuff so it was more about being me, rather than a limited company.

So I’ve spent time re-writing bits, re-organising other bits, and updating it as and when necessary. And now it’s live.

On that score I intend to keep work stuff and d4d™ a bit seperate, so I’m not going to add links between the two. I don’t mention d4d™ over there either, as it’s a personal site. Let’s face it, I’ve been known to bitch a bit about pain-in-the-bum clients before now, and I don’t want that to be easily linked to from the business side of things.

I’ve been thinking about putting a “workblog” into the other site, but as yet I’m still undecided. It smacks slightly of spreading myself too thin, to keep another blog even semi-updated as well as the regular stuff on d4d™, but it’s something I’ll keep on thinking about while I see how other stuff goes over there.

But at least it’s another thing struck off my “to-do” list.

Anti-Spam

Posted: Fri 3 February, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | 5 Comments »

Having just gone through my list of comments marked as spam by SK2, it looks like it’s beginning to get a bit over-zealous. So I’ve taken out about five (admittedly, five from the 430 on the list) and restored them to their proper positions. I’ll keep an eye on this over the next few weeks, I think.

Who knows, it might even be time to upgrade to WP2.0. It’s just not a concept that fills me with glee right now.

In the meantime, sorry Pix, Rob, Tom, and the others whose comments had disappeared.

Escalation

Posted: Wed 1 February, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, General | Leave a comment »

Today, Diamond Geezer has a wonderful piece on a subject close to my own heart – Fuckwits/Yokels and Escalators (of course, he phrases it slightly more tactfully)

Well worth the read.

I wrote about this – albeit in a slightly more ranty fashion a long time back. It’s good to see nothing’s changed. Well, except the *cough* design of this site – seeing an old page I hadn’t got round to moving over really is pretty scary. And eye-damaging…

Bizarre Spam

Posted: Fri 20 January, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts | 1 Comment »

I’m getting dolloped with a load of truly strange spam comments at the moment.

They all seem to consist of text that says something like

Why that long to be loaded a site, and it is very bad with the text, and so very good site

…And that’s it.

I’m not sure what the point of them is, other than being fucking annoying – and with some of the most piss-poor grammar/logical process recently witnessed by mankind.

Organised?

Posted: Sun 15 January, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Getting Organised, Thoughts | 2 Comments »

So yes, this year I’m aiming to get myself more organised. In theory it shouldn’t be hard to improve on my current organisational status, which kind of relies on “Oh yeah, must remember to do that sometime soon”. Which, when you get down to it, really isn’t all the organised at all.

I know I should write “to-do” lists, have plans, have filing cabinets, and ordered places for things, but I just never get round to it. Item one on any to-do list would be “write to-do lists”. Again, hardly ideal.

I’ve even slacked off a bit with D4D™ of late – I seem to have a particular problem with writing stuff on weekends. No good reason really, just that normal domestic life sometimes means that spending time online writing stuff doesn’t happen. No bad thing in a lot of ways – hell, it does sort of signify some kind of life away from technology, if nothing else! – but in others it annoys me that I’ve begun missing days. Something else that needs to be addressed, I suppose.

So anyway, I’ve got to get myself more organised. It’s something I want to do, I just don’t quite know how to go about it. And, of course, “getting organised” is quite a big thing, probably worthy of a to-do list all of its own.

I know it needs to happen, and I need to start working on it. Just bear with me while it happens. I’ll get there, I know that – it’s about bloody time, after all – but the first bit of 2006 is likely to be a bit sporadic while it all comes together.

Bug Fixing

Posted: Mon 9 January, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Work-related | Leave a comment »

Updating on D4D™ this week may be a bit more lacklustre than usual, due to work being absolutely manic.

The site I’ve been working on over the last couple of months finally went semi-live last week, and is now getting the chuff tested out of it. This means that currently I’m snowed under with people saying “x doesn’t work. Why? What’re you doing about it? When will it be fixed?“, and at that point something’s got to give.

Unfortunately, it’s D4D™. I’ll do what I can, but yes, updates may be a bit more sporadic than usual. C’est la vie.

Rationalisation

Posted: Fri 6 January, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | 4 Comments »

If you look over to the right, you’ll probably notice that my link list has reduced. Of course, you may not have ever paid any attention to it in the first place, so you won’t have noticed a change. That’s life.

Anyway, yes, I’ve rationalised the list a bit. There’s some sites I’ve just given up visiting, some that’ve been on pause, and some – well, some I’ve just kind of grown out of. That’s the way it goes sometimes.

WP2.0

Posted: Thu 29 December, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | Leave a comment »

Hmm, so WordPress has released version 2.0. I know, I should go and install it right now but somehow I just can’t be arsed. It’ll wait.

Mainly, I know what a hassle it’ll be to install it all, and then tweak everything (again) to get it to fit in with how I’ve done d4d™ And right now I just can’t be keffed with all the hassle it’ll be. So there. Maybe next weekend, or something.

Pre-prepared

Posted: Wed 28 December, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

So, there goes the last of the pre-written posts. Can’t be bad, eh?

I must admit, it’s something I really like in WordPress, the ability to write posts beforehand, and know they’ll just go live when I’ve told them to, no hassles rebuilding pages and whatever.

And now we’re not away again for a while, so it’ll be back to writing posts as they occur to me, rather than having to consider whether I should leave them for a later date, or when I’m away for the weekend, or whatever.

Although, if I’m honest, I’ll probably still do that. There’s going to be a lot of stuff going on in 2006, and it does mean we’re likely to be busy more often than not, particularly on weekends. So yes, I may still write post-dated stuff for weekends and the like. We’ll see.

Anyway, for the moment we’re back to business as usual chez D4D™

Now that’s what I call belated

Posted: Wed 21 December, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | 2 Comments »

A very heartfelt thanks to Ann, for sending me Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s “MirrorMask” book as a belated birthday present.

It arrived yesterday, and is utterly beautiful. I’m going to look forward to going through it more while I’m away over the Festering Season.

Memetic

Posted: Wed 14 December, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Festering Season, Thoughts | 1 Comment »

Snaffled from Pix…

Welcome to the 2005 edition of getting to know your friends. What you are supposed to do is copy this entire blog entry and paste it onto a new blog entry that you’ll post. Change all the answers so they apply to you, and then publish! Leave a comment if you do this.The theory is that you will learn a lot of little (random) things about your friends, if you did not know them already.

  1. What time did you get up this morning?
    7am
  2. Diamonds or pearls?
    Neither – Jade for a preference, or polished cabochon (not cut) sapphires
  3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema?
    Harry Potter IV
  4. What is your favourite TV show?
    West Wing, although there’s also a liking for stuff like House, CSI/CSI:Miami (Not New York), Have I Got News For You and a few others.
  5. What do you usually have for breakfast?
    Cereal with dried fruit, and an Orange Juice.
  6. Favourite cuisine?
    Edible
  7. What food do you dislike?
    Raw Tomato
  8. What is your favourite CD at the moment?
    Tough One – taste changes too much even in one day.
  9. Morning or night person?
    Night
  10. Favourite sandwich?
    Subway Melt or Club on Honey Oat bread
  11. What characteristic do you despise?
    Being self-centred
  12. Favourite item of clothing?
    Currently my long (knee-length) wool coat
  13. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would it be?
    A place where no-one else went
  14. What colour is your bathroom?
    Light Blue, with White tiles
  15. Favourite brand of clothing?
    No preferred brands – just whatever fits
  16. Where would you retire to?
    Somewhere else.
  17. What was your most memorable birthday?
    Thirtieth. I’d always said I’d spend it on a beach somewhere, and did so in Lanzarote.
  18. Favourite sport to watch?
    Snooker, or British Touring Car.
  19. Who do you least expect to complete this?
    Anyone
  20. Person you expect to complete it first?
    *shrug*
  21. Person who is least busy?
    *shrug*
  22. When is your birthday?
    5th Nov. Every year.
  23. What is your shoe size?
    11
  24. Pets?
    Two, Psychotic Cat (Turkish Van), and Hound (collie)
  25. Any new and exciting news you’d like to share with us?
    Nope, not yet.
  26. What did you want to be when you were little?
    Bigger
  27. What is your favourite flower?
    Passion Flower. Or a carnivorous one.
  28. What date on the calendar are you looking forward to?
    27th December, when the Festering Season’s over.
  29. One word to describe the person who you snaffled this from?
    Knockout.

Header Images

Posted: Tue 6 December, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Festering Season | Leave a comment »

In a fit of pissed-off boredom today, I’ve created the header image for d4d™ over the Festering Season. It’s truly naff, which pleases me in this instance. Graphic designer I ain’t.

Still, it’ll be up as the header over the joyous festival, and will then disappear ’til next week. Oooh, how excited you aren’t by that news…

Header

Posted: Thu 1 December, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky | Leave a comment »

Oh, and yes, I did change the header image for the day.

There’s actually a handy little bit of PHP I wrote that means it’ll check the day, and if it’s certain dates then a different header image is loaded instead of the default one. Means I don’t have to piss about with swapping images or whatever – or remembering certain days in order to get it done on time.

All very sad, very geeky, and really rather more organised than I’d expected to be. Sad but true.

Timepiece

Posted: Tue 22 November, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts | 1 Comment »

I’m a bit of a fan of watches, although currently I actually only have the one. (A Seiko Kinetic, not that anyone cares) However, I’m looking at others, and wondering whether I should increase my selection a bit.

And then (semi-via Gordon) I saw this. Oh yes, indeedy do – the perfect D4D™ watch…

Measure Map

Posted: Fri 4 November, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky | Leave a comment »

Currently I’m experimenting with a new web stats package on d4d™ While I’m still keeping Nedstat WebStats4U, some people have noted that it can cause pop-up problems. (To my knowledge they haven’t yet hit me with that issue, but I’m waiting…)

Anyway, the new tool is still in alpha development (i.e. “Don’t hold your breath”) and I’ve been lucky enough to be able to be a tester for it. It’s called MeasureMap, which currently seems a bit of an odd name – then again, I should think “Amazon” for a book-seller was originally deemed to be a bit of an odd name too…

While it’s demanded slightly more work in putting everything in place – a whole three cut-and-paste jobs instead of the standard one – it makes for interesting reading, and appears to be slightly more accurate than the other stuff, in that it ignores repeat visits from the same IP address. So it’s recording unique visitors instead of actual hits – both of which can be useful. It’d be nice to have both coming from the same package, but maybe that’s still in development somewhere along the line. We’ll see.

Multi-day Writing

Posted: Thu 3 November, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts, Travel | Leave a comment »

Today’s one of those odd days. We’re away from tomorrow ’til late Monday, so not only am I writing stuff for today, but also trying to add in some posts for while I’m away.

Basically, what this means is that I get to do five day’s worth of posts in one day. Which is a bit of a mental struggle sometimes.

Maybe I should just let d4d™ be a bit quieter over the weekend, but well, I still find I like writing stuff for it, so we’ll just have to see how it goes, won’t we.

Outage

Posted: Mon 31 October, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky | 1 Comment »

Apologies about d4d™’s lack of availability yesterday – apparently the server at 34sp had some major problems with its power supply, so everything went tits-up ’til they moved the server’s hard-drives over to a spare machine.

Still, apparently all is well again today, so that’s good news. It did have a pretty major effect on the stats though – I think yesterday d4d™ got a whole 60 readers, instead of the normal 150 or so.

400,000

Posted: Thu 20 October, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

Yee-ha, my word count’s just gone over the 400,000 mark. Gods I need to get out more…

Grammar

Posted: Sat 15 October, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

A while back I sent an email to Grammar Nazi regarding a question about punctuation in a certain situation.

And now he’s replied – and the question remains unanswered, although I do like his half-assed theories on the subject. (Hey, he called them that, not me)

Wordage

Posted: Thu 6 October, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky | 2 Comments »

In a fit of truly sad “I wonder…”, observant readers will have noticed that there’s a little wordcount thing over there –>

It probably won’t last long, but I was having a bit of a statisticky moment, having just passed that 3,000th post, so I thought it might be somewhat interesting. Of course, it’s not really, and it’s of no use to anyone except me. But all the same, well, I thought I’d find out.

In other news, I’m now a lot more familiar with some of how WordPress works, so that much-mooted anti-sweary “worksafe” version may just come into being at some point soonish. Maybe. If you’re lucky.

3,000

Posted: Tue 4 October, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

Bloody hell, this is the 3,000th post on d4d™. That’s going some. I know that the actual post ID is something like 3,020, but there’s been posts I’ve started writing and then deleted, and that sort of thing, which knackers the numbering system. However, WP has a “you have written xxx posts, and that says that this one is number 3,000 – so that’s what I’m going with.

Looking back over the archives, I find it interesting to see just how much d4d™ has changed over the three years it’s been writing. There’s been a lot of progress, both in writing style, and in the life behind the writing. (ooh, check that out for semi-pretentious. Get me, indeed. Heh)

The last year in particular has held one hell of a lot of changes. This time last year I was still working for the Council of the Damned alongside Stinky. I was travelling on most weekends to see Herself, which helped stress-levels both a) go up while travelling, and b) go down once I’d got there. (As a small aside, I’ve just noticed that it’s less than 13 months since I did post #2000, that’s something like 3 posts a day on average over the last year.) I was looking at moving away from Manchester, although we hadn’t decided on what the domestic situation would be once I’d done so.

Over the last twelve months I’ve become a lot more settled, moved, sorted out a lot of stuff, passed the driving test, got myself out of debt, folded up the old company completely, and had two jobs. I’m a lot calmer than I was, and less ranty – although a lot of stuff still bugs me.

I wonder what’ll happen in the next 1,000 posts?

Unavailable

Posted: Sat 1 October, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky, Thoughts | 5 Comments »

I don’t know why, but on several occasion this week, d4d™ has been coming up on my browser as “connection refused” or even “does not exist”. I suspect it’s been happening to other people as well – because my readership figures are at about 75% of the ones from the rest of the month, which I guess is pretty significant.

If you’ve had this problem at all, can you let me know? (I know you haven’t had it this time, or you wouldn’t be reading the page, but hey, I’m sure you’ll figure it out) I want to know a bit more before I go chasing up 34sp.com about it all…

Away

Posted: Fri 2 September, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Travel | 1 Comment »

Well, we’re off to Norfolk for a week. When I get back next Sunday I’m then off to Amsterdam on Monday, and not back ’til Tuesday.

So d4d™ may be a bit quiet. There’s stuff queued up to be posted, but it’s not going to be as prolific as normal. Live with it.

All quiet on the d4d™ front

Posted: Tue 30 August, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | 1 Comment »

Yesterday turned out to be one of those “can’t be arsed” days. I turned the PC on to get the emails, and then turned it off again. No idea why, but I just wasn’t in the mood to do much at all. Mind you, isn’t that what bank holidays are for?

It may be a bit quiet here next week too – we’re away for the week, so while I will probably leave some stuff to go up during the week, I’m not sure what else will be going on. Just have to wait and see, I suppose…

Colours 2

Posted: Fri 26 August, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky | 5 Comments »

I’ve been doing a bit of research into the colour-switcher up at the top of the page, following on from the question I asked earlier in the week. Basically, I started wondering which colours were the most popular (although I was pretty sure that yellow, as the default, would be highest) and least popular.

At the time of writing, the results are :

Colour No of uses Percentage
Yellow 2548 94.58%
White 83 3.08%
Pink 26 0.97%
Blue 17 0.63%
Green 8 0.3%
Red 6 0.22%
Purple 6 0.22%
Total Number of Records : 2694

I’m actually quite surprised how few people use alternative colours, and also that bloody Pink comes in so highly – it’s the colour scheme that I personally loathe the most (although Red comes a close second).

I may have a bit of a twat-about with some of the colour-schemes to make them a bit less offensive, but I don’t know – haven’t decided yet. It’s a thought for the future, anyway.

Colours

Posted: Wed 24 August, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts | 8 Comments »

I’ve just been norking about with one of the colour-schemes for the site, making it so it’s not quite as loud and nasty as it was. All of which made me wonder – which colour-schemes do people actually use?

So go on – which one do you use/prefer? Mine’s “worksafe” in general.

2,900

Posted: Fri 19 August, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | 1 Comment »

Somehow I’ve now managed to write a grand total (according to WordPress) of 2,900 posts on d4d™

That really is going some – just under 1,000 posts per year of d4d™’s life.

I really, really need to get out more, don’t I?

Drafts

Posted: Tue 16 August, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

You know, sometimes I really think I should set myself up a proper list of draft posts, just for days like today when I’ve got about 8 things I know I was going to remember to write, but of course now I’ve forgotten what they were.

Maybe I should just carry a notebook around – or, hey, use some of the pages in my filofax – now there’s a novel idea! It just gets so frustrating sometimes, knowing there were things I was thinking “Yeah, I’ll leave that ’til tomorrow to write about”, and now thinking “What the fuck was it I was going to say?”.

So yeah, I may just end up with a little notebook or something (or use that Filofax) to get some more productivity out of all this. We’ll see.

Weekend

Posted: Fri 12 August, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky, Travel | 1 Comment »

This weekend I’m away up to Manchester to see friends. It’s the first time I’ve been there this year, and it’s going to be quite fun seeing the old place again.

There’ll still be a couple of posts to go up over the weekend though – don’t you just love the delayed publishing stuff in WordPress?

Twat

Posted: Thu 11 August, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Sweary | 4 Comments »

There’s always at least one cunt in any party, isn’t there? You know the sort, sneering at everyone else, deciding they’re all a waste of space, and generally being a snide fuckmonkey cunt.

In my case, yesterday it was Ken and his comment.

suggest you rename site
SELF-OBSESSION FOR DUMMIES

Well, I’d suggest that either a) Ken sticks his head back up his arse, and farts, or b) that if he’s going to fucking sneer at other people, perhaps the marmoset-cocked wonder should learn some proper English (like wot I knows) and consider use of words like “I” and “your”, which make the comment at least look literate, if still somewhat fuckwitted.

Cunt.

The Report

Posted: Wed 10 August, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

Well, it turns out that in three years d4d™ has had 6,376,116 hits, and shown 2,214,576 pages. Not bad going at all. The full report is is here. There are a few days where there appears to have been no logfile created or moved, so the figure is probably slightly on the low side, but hell, I’m more than happy with averaging 2.1 million hits a year, or 738,192 pages.

In some ways it’s really hard to believe that d4d™’s been that busy, particularly when I think about it just really being a personal site. d4d™ started off as a little thing to see if I could keep a project going – I’d had the idea, but at the time (and still, to a greater or lesser degree) I was great at having the ideas, and far less good at carrying them through. d4d™ was a thing to prove to myself that I could keep on with a project past the initial stages.

Sometimes I’m still not sure if I can – I keep feeling that d4d™ is really still in those “initial” stages, even after three years. I don’t know what the future holds – and when I look at the differences the last year has had, I don’t want to know what even the next 12 months hold in stall, because I’ll just go with it, and have a good time.

In truth I never really believed that d4d™ would take off – perhaps that’s what made it easier to continue. Three years on, and I’m still enjoying writing it, and keeping up with new ideas. (although I know I haven’t innovated that much this year yet. There’s stuff in the wings though, although whether it’ll be ’05 or ’06 before it happens, Gawd only knows at the moment) So whatever else goes on, I’m pretty sure d4d™ will still be here to celebrate its fourth and fifth birthdays too.

And a big thanks to all those who do read, comment, pass on the word, whatever. Thanks is too small a word, but for now it’ll have to do.

Time

Posted: Wed 10 August, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky | 4 Comments »

Bloody Hell, this log analysis takes some time. I started it running four hours ago, and it’s still plodding through…

Considering I’m using a PC with twin 3.4Ghz Pentium 4 processors and 1Gb of DDR RAM, that’s one shit of a lot of computation.

UPDATED : It finally took from 9.15 to 2.30 -5 and a quarter hours. That’s a lot of work.

3

Posted: Wed 10 August, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | 6 Comments »

Yes, d4d™ has now been being written for three solid years. I’m having problems believing that myself, but it’s true. Over 1,000 days, and coming up to the three thousand posts mark, which is pretty good in anyone’s book.

Of course, there are plenty of blogs that’ve been round far longer than d4d, and thousands are better-written, better-designed, whatever. But still, I’m pleased with how it’s gone over the last three years.

D4D™ didn’t have a party this time like it did last year, but there’s that kind of acknowledgement of growing up. I’m currently running a log-analysis to see just how busy d4d™ has been over that three years, and I’ll post the results once the PC has wheezed it’s way through the 110Mb of zipped-up logfiles, including all the DNS lookup and so on. I think it’ll probably be a fairly big figure though.

Anyway, onwards and upwards to the next year, three years, five years, whatever.

Jack

Posted: Thu 4 August, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky, Work-related | Leave a comment »

One thing that’s interesting with my work at Groovy Group (I can’t think of anything better for now, so that’ll do as a name) is that in many ways I don’t really seem to have a defined role at all.

Yes, I’m certainly the person developing all the website stuff and so on, and that’s what I primarily do. But at the same time I also regularly get assigned system administrator stuff, design stuff, (which is a bit of a problem, as I’m emphatically not a designer!) and get asked deeply geeky and technical questions by the rest of the staff, including the CTO – in fact, one could probably say that I’ve got some form of input in most of the company activities. In addition to all that, I seem to be the one who helps out when other people need it, and also the one who does the support-type work. (fixing connections, figuring what’s wrong with the network, that kind of thing) Oh, and in addition I still get to write d4d™, plus figure out a lot of the concepts behind the website stuff.

I’m not complaining – in fact, it suits me really well – but it just seems a bit odd when most people have a fairly well-defined position that I’m the one that seems to cover all the bits not listed in the detailed descriptions. Still, it certainly makes for a varied day!

New CMS

Posted: Mon 1 August, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky, Work-related | Leave a comment »

Swearwords galore are emanating from the area around my desk at the moment. The new CMS that the site is using is Mambo, an Open Source thing that I’d come across about 18 months ago, but not fully used. The reason I didn’t bother using it properly back then is because it was – to be frank – an utter cunt to set up, and about as instinctive as repeatedly kicking a brick wall while barefoot. In fact, I wrote this and this about it at the time.

So, the new place (and I really must think up a name for them sometime) has a site that’s been around for a while running on PHPNuke which they’ve decided should be *cough* “upgraded” to run on Mambo. They hired a company to do it (thank God – I’d have murdered by now) who seem to know their way round the software – well, someone has to, I guess. And now it’s down to me to sort out the final teething problems, along with things like file uploads and the like.

And I have to say, even when using it as a system that’s been set up by people who know what they’re doing, it’s still an utter piece of shite. It’s not instinctive, it’s pretty much user-hostile, and doesn’t follow a logical workflow for things like editing or uploading documents.

In short, it’s junk. Regardless of the fact it appears to be used by a lot of people, and the fact that when running it apparently runs just fine. But when you’re adding in content, or trying to edit stuff, it’s junk. Pure and simple. I’m seriously bloody glad I went with WP instead of it.

Validation

Posted: Fri 29 July, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

Well, I’ve banged on about it enough – and particularly in recent conversations with a few people both at work and in other commercial stuff – so I’ve finally got round to ensuring that this page on d4d™ validates against the W3C’s CSS and XHTML standards.

And lo, it does. I’m sure there’ll be odds and sods where I still fall over (the one that readily springs to mind concerns when I add images into the main part of d4d™) but as a general rule of thumb I’m now compliant with all the guidelines. Which is nice.

In other semi-related news, I’ve heard through the grapevine that Stinky from my employers last year has been making a rabid arse of himself, getting all militant and bullshitty. I’m really pleased I’m no longer working there, because I’d have to be listening to his ranting every day. Even worse, he’d probably be waving his arms about while doing so, and there wouldn’t be a nose-peg handy for dealing with the resultant olfactory offences.

So – always best to look on the bright side of these things!

(Oh, and yes, I do realise that the rest of d4d™ still needs some work before I can get site-wide validation – particularly the older photo pages and rants etc. I’ll get there one day soon, promise.)

I-Fucking-E

Posted: Tue 19 July, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky | 1 Comment »

OK, now this is one for the techies. In Internet Explorer (or I-fucking-E as it’s known to any decent techie) the comments box fits in the window fine, regardless of resolution, until you start typing in it.

At that point the box expands, and (on low resolutions) the right-hand side of it disappears under the right-hand nav bar (all the links etc.). It’s fine ’til someone types in it though – and I admit, I thought I’d fixed it ages back, except it turns out that I hadn’t fully tested it, because I hadn’t typed in the sodding thing.

So – any ideas how to fix it?

Brief Pause

Posted: Mon 18 July, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | Leave a comment »

Yes, I’m still alive. I just ended up decided that my “quiet weekend” would also consist of little to no time on the computer, and so I took a proper break for a couple of days.

It was a bit “spur of the moment”, otherwise I’d have written a couple of posts that could go up on a post-dated thing like I normally do when I’m away for a weekend. But well, I didn’t. Nowt I can do about it now, so it’s just one of those things.

Normal service will now be resumed.

Gordon Ramsay

Posted: Wed 13 July, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts | 2 Comments »

From the huge splurge in hits from Google searches for “Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares Bonaparte’s, do I assume that last night’s Gordon Ramsay involved him re-visiting the restaurant in Silsden where he got fed the dodgy oyster?

Thought so.

Visa – a thought

Posted: Mon 11 July, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | 4 Comments »

Yes, over the weekend I wrote that post about the limbless child who’d been granted a visa. And I made a right spud of half the typing in it, as observed by Dvd.

I could have gone back and edited it so I’d typed everything correctly, and sorted it out.

Instead, I went with Scary‘s style, and limited myself to saying “Oh, Spoons” and left it at that.

So there.

Black Ribbon

Posted: Fri 8 July, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, News | Leave a comment »

Observant readers will notice that there’s currently a black ribbon image over there –>

It contains an alt and title tag for the emergency info numbers for London. © Google for the rest of it.

In the meantime, I’m very glad to hear that Diamond Geezer, Karen at Uborka, Pix, Dragon, Reynolds, Gert, Anna and all the others I know are OK.

Subscribing

Posted: Tue 5 July, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts | 9 Comments »

One idea that was suggested over the weekend in Norfolk was that d4d™ should have a section (or, indeed, an entirely seperate site) that was passworded, and possibly also needed a subscription-type effort in order to get the password. This subscription would be something probably paltry (Maybe £10 per year, or something) more to show willing than anything else.

Content would most likely be far more ranty stuff, sweary, and generally things slanderous, libellous, and not meant for general consumption.

So – what do you think? Would it work? Would you read it?

Should there be a seperate “subscription only” site?
Yes
No
Don’t Care, and wouldn’t read it anyway.
Don’t Care, but might read it on occasion
You sell-out bastard. What a shit idea. What the fuck makes you think anyone would pay for this crap?

  
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Comments

Posted: Mon 4 July, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky | 1 Comment »

I don’t know if it was affecting anyone, but it came to my attention that the old problem with writing comments in IE had reared its ugly head again. I suspect that it happened when I upgraded WP a couple of weeks back, and I just didn’t notice as I never use IE if I can help it.

Anyway, it’s fixed again now, and this time I’ll try and make sure I copy the updated file to all my locations I might edit from again.

Honest.

Shortcuts

Posted: Fri 1 July, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky | 1 Comment »

One of the innovations I find I really dislike on computers is the meese mices mousen cordless mouse with rechargeable batteries.

Now, I’m not going to argue the point too much, because really it’s me who’s at fault rather than the mouse itself, but I’m forever forgetting to put the sodding thing back on its little recharging cradle overnight. So by the end of the week I’m getting either a) no mouse service at all, or b) error messages and warnings all over the place about “Mouse Battery is low”. Today is using option a.

Fortunately, I’m a truly sad git, and actually know most of the Windows® keyboard shortcuts, as well as the Firefox ones, which means I can still work fairly well even without the mouse. It’s an interesting thing in a lot of ways, because you suddenly discover a lot more about website design, and usability in general.

For instance, looking at d4d™ itself, and Gordon‘s where we’ve knobbed about with the site navigation so it actually appears last in the code is truly useful. A couple of shift-TABs to go back, and lo, I can get to anywhere on the site.

However, writing stuff in the WordPress “Write” window is an utter, utter bastard because of the way the order has been coded for where TAB sends you next. It’s something I’ll be looking at hacking about with in the future, I think.

It’s something that I’m sure I’ll be writing more about. Be afraid.

Anti-Spam etc.

Posted: Thu 30 June, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky | 1 Comment »

Yes, again, I’m writing about Anti-Spam stuff on this site. It gets tedious, I know. But then, so does Spam.

Anyway, I’ve just installed a couple of other items, so if you do have any problems commenting (although if it’s marked as “spam” I’ll soon resurrect it anyway, don’t worry) then send me a mail and let me know. With luck the entire process will be invisible, and shouldn’t cause any problems (although I know that Spam Karma’s been chucking out some valid comments in the last couple of days) but well, it wouldn’t be the first time I’d been wrong on things like this.

Linkage

Posted: Thu 30 June, 2005 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™ | 2 Comments »

I love it when people write my content for me. I’ve just received this semi-spam from some fucknuts who wants me to advertise porn DVDs. Hmmm, I think not.

I’m writing to ask if you would be interested in exchanging links with my website at www.[pornsite].com
I’ve taken the liberty of already adding your site to my links section in the unconfirmed links category.
All new links are added here until a link back can be confirmed. Once this is done the link is moved to a category of your choice.
If you would like to exchange links please link to my site, http://www.[pornsite].com using the text – [pornsite]. The HTML that needs to be put on your site is,

<a href=”http://www.[pornsite].com”>[pornsite]</a>

Once this has been added please let me know it’s location and also what category you would like you link to be moved to. If you want any specific text used in the title and description please let me know this also.
If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Thanks,
Matt

So yes, let’s say I did, and leave it at that.

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